Do you have any flash sticks plugged into it? Disk in the optical drive? If these devices are set to boot from before the HDD, then this problem can be fixed as easily as it was created (but usually after hours and hours of frustration, lol). If not, then most likely your hard drive is having some problems.
I'm just assuming this doesn't have windows 7 on it. I think I remember this particular one came out with Vista. But it may have been XP too.. 7 would have told you while it was still running that the hard drive was starting to have some problems, but if you had an earlier operation system on it, then you probably just got blind sided.
I'm going to share with you the only ways I know to check for this without spending a fortune.
The easiest is to stick another hard drive in it that you know is working well if you have one on hand. Install whatever operating system you want to it and see if it works just fine. If so, then you can recover your target="_blank">SATA PATA IDE Drive to USB 2 0 Adapter Converter Cable for 2 5 3 5 Inch...
If you don't have another drive laying around (because only geeks typically do) then there is another cheap option. Get what they call a "boot disk" from any number of sources. I use ActiveBoot myself. Boot Disk Utilities for booting into Windows DOS Though there are many other choices that are just as good if not better. That one just works for my purposes. You can boot from the CD rom into a portable edition of windows that does not do anything to your hard drive at all. Just runs from the RAM. Once you do this, open an explorer window and see if you can find your hard drive. From here you can back up anything on it to a flash stick or an external hard drive, whatever's handy. If the backup goes well, then run "check disk" to see if it has any bad sectors. If so, then you'll want to reformat it (to format around those sectors) and run disk doctor or something (all on the active boot cd) to make sure you'll avoid the bad spots in the future. Once that's done, you can reinstall the OS onto that hard drive, but I would strongly suggest replacing it as soon as possible. If you don't want to buy this disk, then see if one of your nerdy friends happens to have one.
I know with Windows Vista, there where numerous issues such as drivers not working properly. Working for a while then dying for no reason. Firewire devices where particularly bad about this. This could cause the error you saw as well. If you want to stick with Vista, that's cool, but you're going to have to find the drivers you need on another pc and slipstream them into the vista install most likely. If you would like to do this, I can walk you through the process.
Now if you want to upgrade, I would suggest Windows 7 and I can help you find the drivers for it if the manufacturer's website doesn't show any links. I can also show you how to make alot of really cool things for this system, such as a custom install disk. With one of those, anytime you have an issue, you can just pop it in and walk away. When you come back, everything's installed correctly and ready to roll. All of your old documents will be in a folder on the route directory called "Windows.old."
So in summary: Most likely a driver is messed up, second most likely your hard drive is dying. If it's a driver, a re-install may be the best solution. If that doesn't work, then try installing Windows 7. If that doesn't work, then a new hard drive may be in order. But I would still suggest running Windows 7 to avoid problems like this.
Answers & Comments
Do you have any flash sticks plugged into it? Disk in the optical drive? If these devices are set to boot from before the HDD, then this problem can be fixed as easily as it was created (but usually after hours and hours of frustration, lol). If not, then most likely your hard drive is having some problems.
I'm just assuming this doesn't have windows 7 on it. I think I remember this particular one came out with Vista. But it may have been XP too.. 7 would have told you while it was still running that the hard drive was starting to have some problems, but if you had an earlier operation system on it, then you probably just got blind sided.
I'm going to share with you the only ways I know to check for this without spending a fortune.
The easiest is to stick another hard drive in it that you know is working well if you have one on hand. Install whatever operating system you want to it and see if it works just fine. If so, then you can recover your target="_blank">SATA PATA IDE Drive to USB 2 0 Adapter Converter Cable for 2 5 3 5 Inch...
If you don't have another drive laying around (because only geeks typically do) then there is another cheap option. Get what they call a "boot disk" from any number of sources. I use ActiveBoot myself. Boot Disk Utilities for booting into Windows DOS Though there are many other choices that are just as good if not better. That one just works for my purposes. You can boot from the CD rom into a portable edition of windows that does not do anything to your hard drive at all. Just runs from the RAM. Once you do this, open an explorer window and see if you can find your hard drive. From here you can back up anything on it to a flash stick or an external hard drive, whatever's handy. If the backup goes well, then run "check disk" to see if it has any bad sectors. If so, then you'll want to reformat it (to format around those sectors) and run disk doctor or something (all on the active boot cd) to make sure you'll avoid the bad spots in the future. Once that's done, you can reinstall the OS onto that hard drive, but I would strongly suggest replacing it as soon as possible. If you don't want to buy this disk, then see if one of your nerdy friends happens to have one.
I know with Windows Vista, there where numerous issues such as drivers not working properly. Working for a while then dying for no reason. Firewire devices where particularly bad about this. This could cause the error you saw as well. If you want to stick with Vista, that's cool, but you're going to have to find the drivers you need on another pc and slipstream them into the vista install most likely. If you would like to do this, I can walk you through the process.
Now if you want to upgrade, I would suggest Windows 7 and I can help you find the drivers for it if the manufacturer's website doesn't show any links. I can also show you how to make alot of really cool things for this system, such as a custom install disk. With one of those, anytime you have an issue, you can just pop it in and walk away. When you come back, everything's installed correctly and ready to roll. All of your old documents will be in a folder on the route directory called "Windows.old."
So in summary: Most likely a driver is messed up, second most likely your hard drive is dying. If it's a driver, a re-install may be the best solution. If that doesn't work, then try installing Windows 7. If that doesn't work, then a new hard drive may be in order. But I would still suggest running Windows 7 to avoid problems like this.