computer wont boot up...

[smartalecc5]

Well what would you know, I go away on vacation with a working computer and return home to see it doesnt work!

Anyways, when I first booted it up when I came home, the first thing I got was a big black screen that mentioned something about a S.M.A.R.T. command had failed. Above that message was something about a slave drive- but I think that was working correctly. (whats a slave drive???). So I looked for instructions on it and I pressed F2.

So I got to the blue and grey screen where I could change everything and tabbed right all the over to Discard Changes and Exit.

I thought that would work but, but it didnt. It then showed SONY in big white letters and then the huge Intel Pentium 4 logo........ and then SONY....and then Intel logo!

I dont know what to do, I've tried it like 10 times.

Thanks-
Kevin

On a Diagnostic error codes page (http://support.wdc.com/techinfo/general/errorcodes.asp?print=y) it says...159 SMART Error Self Monitoring, Analysis, and Reporting Technology (SMART) Error returned during SMART Status/Self Test Command. The drive is defective. Replace. Replace Drive

Is my hard drive really crashed??


PPS. I have windows XP w/ sp2 running on a sony vaio

[JamieR]

hmm...is your BIOS/CMOS set correctly to boot your boot disk as Primary master? Have you got 2 hard disks in your computer?

[smartalecc5]

hmm...is your BIOS/CMOS set correctly to boot your boot disk as Primary master? Have you got 2 hard disks in your computer?

To asnwer your first question- I have no idea. Dont really undersatnd that lingo.

To answer your second question- we have a C local drive that has a 15GB on it but only has/had 250 mb of free space on it and a local D drive with about 80 GB on it w/ about 75 GB free. So yes, I think I have 2 Hard Disks in my computer.

[JamieR]

hmm this is what I usually do in this kind of situation:

1) check all BIOS/CMOS settings are ok
2) take the hard disk out and see if it will boot in another computer
3) if it boots, I update BIOS or replace the motherboard...as one or the other is usually dodgy.

[smartalecc5]

ok thanks, I think Ill justtake it into compUSA.

hanks for your help

[JamieR]

Okay - hope it works out ok:D