Axiom Home Page Forums General Discussion The Water Cooler Computer not working....need help!

If it's not spinning at all, you can try tapping or knocking the drive a few times. Sometimes it gets 'unstuck' and start spinning again; that might get you a few minutes to backup any important files.

+1 on kcarlile's and JamieG's advice. Both excellent ideas.

But if that doesn't work, you can try the freezer.

Usually it doesn't work, so don't get too excited. But it is possible. Over the years, I've tried it or seen it tried on perhaps 20 dead hard drives. On all but one case, nothing. But on that one case, the frozen drive booted and functioned long enough to copy the important data off of it.

Here's an update. I took it in to a computer tech for testing and the result is what I and some of you suspected. The hard drive is dead. I didn't have any important info on it so it's not a big deal that it is gone.

I ordered a new drive(Western Digital) from Newegg on Tuesday and received it two days later. I hooked it up, ran the bios and was pleased that it recognized the new drive. Installed Windows xp and now I'm running strong again.

Thanks for all the suggestions and support.

Glad to hear you've got it up and running again.

Now pic up a usb drive and some backup software and start running regular backups.