is my hard drive bad? help is needed badly.

[palidon112]

i wanted to remove a fan grill (terribly limited airflow) so i shutdown my comp (first time in a few days) and i removed the front panel of my case, took the grill off, put the front panel back on and started up. started fine, opened msn, media player and FF2 and all of a sudden it crashed. so i turned it back on and it brought me to a page that said that windows couldn't startup. i tried starting in safemode, then i tried starting with the last known good configuration, thats when it said that it was missing a startup file (i forget the directory it gave me). next i opened up my case and checked all the cables and made sure they were plugged and i tried starting again, nothing. so the next time i went into bios and it showed the dvd drive on the IDE but it didnt show my hdd on the sata. i can also hear the hdd making a clicking sound. i also tried windows recovery and it gave me some stupid error.

this hdd has a history of crashing, this is #3.

any help would be very appreciated.


also its under warranty yet so im going to bring it in, but i just got a new case, cpu cooler and vga cooler. should i put everything in its original case when i take it in? or would they not care?

 

[kof2000]

if it is just missing a file that means the computer is still able to read from the hdd. just pop in the xp cd and restore that missing file.

 

[palidon112]

true, it seemed to be reading from it earlier, but now it doesn't recognize it in bios. right now it doesnt go past the original "vaio" screen except to go into bios. it wont go into the advanced startup options or windows recovery wizard now.

i cant find my stupid xp disc right now either =(

 

[lhstud10]

if somehow you can get it running you can create the recovery cd's like i did when i was going to format my hd. lol

 

[The_Other_One]

If it's making funny noises and can't be picked up by the BIOS, it sounds like it's dead... Still, you may want to try it in another computer or something just to be safe.

 

[palidon112]

a problem though is that i don't have another comp with a sata connection, they all have ide.

the computer is no longer under manufacturer warranty, but it is under compusa's extended parts/labor warranty. so im going to take it in i think. but i have a question about that warranty, i put everything in a new case, instaled a gfx card, and put a new heatsink on the processor, would that void the warranty? should i put all the original parts back on it, or not worry about it?