Since i have absolutely no knowledge on this subject, i'm just posting here (me in general technical, how weird) to get some basic guidelines.

SO when i start up pc, you hear the hard disk (i presume) make a ticking noise, as if it's stuck (you probably know what i mean, i think i read about similar noises here on this forum) Then i get the message: Disk boot failure, insert system disk and press enter.

So how do i proceed? I probably should start searching for all those CD's that come with a computer right?
Did the hard disk die and is it permanent? Can i salvage any info on it (god i hope so) and if so, any pointers on how to do this exactly? Or should i just bring this thing to a specialised shop?

I should also add that for the first time in my life i opened the case of my pc to see if i could do anything there, this is a good indication on how far my trouble shooting skills will go. Using my very old laptop now, which has heating issues and a very bad (nearly dead) battery. Hoping that it will last just a little longer now.

well I am sure the guys can help better than me but it sounds like your hard drive went belly up and you would probably just need to buy a new one and install windows on it. But I am in the category with the non tech people so I would wait for someone else before doing anything. I'll mention to satis your post.

If you hear your hard drive clicking, that's the little arm beating up against the side of the hard drive case. Yea, it's dead. If it's really important you salvage the data on it, and you don't mind spending the money, find some place that rescues dead hard drives. It's not something any computer store is going to be able to do... you basically have to crack open the hard drive casing in a clean-room environment and replace whatever is jacked up.. or rig it long enough so you can get the data off. If it's not that important, get a new drive, reinstall Windows, and be on your merry way.

If it's marginally important but you can't be assed to spend any money on it, get the new hard drive and get your pc working. I hear that putting hard drive in the freezer may actually fix them for a short time period. Seriously. So put it in an anti-static bag, drop it in the freezer for a few hours, then hook it up to your pc as a secondary drive to your new drive. Boot up, hope it works, and if it does, start frantically copying crap over in order of importance. Hope you can get it all copied before it falls over again.

Yeah I'm with Satis, that sounds like a dead HD, sorry.

Unless it's filled with very important things you may even be 'lucky' that it's just your HD, since they are easily replaced and dirt cheap these days. I mean, I bought a portable HD with a capacity of 1TB last week for 80€ - that should give you an indication of how cheap they've gotten.

I never tried the freezer trick (heh), but it's worth trying. Even if your not comfortable doing that, it's always a good idea to try and hook up your old HD as a secondary to your new one, you never know if you can somehow retrieve some data. I've done that a few times already actually.

If you're afraid to mess something up when replacing the HD's, just ask for help. We'll tell you what you need to do (it's really not hard). QUick question (since you've opened up your pc already): is your HD connected to your motherboard with an IDE cable or a SATA cable? If it's old, probably the former.

Would be cool to see the mechanical failure on the arm

It's a SATA i think (not home at now, but i think i disconnected and reconnected that thing yesterday).

So i'll have to get me a new HD then, that's what i thought/feared. If i have one, i'll try the freezer trick. Most photo's and stuff are on a portable backup HD, but the exams and stuff i've been working on the latest weeks aren't, so i'd be a big setback if i have to redo all that work.

My father-in-law and my sister-in-law's husband are both skilled with pc's so they might have some spare parts i can use at first. And make sure i don't kill anything important while i'm at it.

just remember, when you drop your hard drive in the freezer, but it in an antistatic back to keep it from getting wet. Not a ziplock bag.

and like ox said, you can try just hooking it up as a secondary drive to see if it'll come back to life long enough to rescue some stuff. I've done that as well with some success.

Any success yet J? Or is your wife giving you chores to discourage you from working on your PC so you'll play less games and spend more time with her?

Didn't have much time, since i'm pretty swamped with schoolwork (exams coming up, evaluations on friday) but when looking around in my pc i noticed my power supply probably died as well.

Was going to put in another power supply and HD from my father-in-law but those weren't sata (or what was it called again ).

Probably just going to shop for a new pc later, now just need to find the time to have a look into it so that i don't get ripped off too much.

/me is amused by people that can function in life without a computer.

/me is not amused since i just realised i have to install every f*cking steam game again

not to mention the loss of save games

well at least some of the saved games steam should have picked up right? /hugz it is all good man - I had to do that like 2 days in a row not long ago.

Dunno if i still have some savegames. I've installed the 2 games i got gifted from an awesome person and when i went to bed i started on TF2. Not sure if i'll even bother installing the rest.

Btw I took the easy road and bought a prebuild rig, i'm pretty sure all stuff in my old pc will fit in my new one, so at least i have a couple of spare parts. Not that i feel like throwing my new one open rightaway.

Haha, good to hear. And cool to have you back among the living.

Shiny was referring to the "steamcloud". Some games save/give you the option to save your data and savegames in the 'cloud', i.e. serverside. That way you can play games under your steam login on every PC without having to transfer your progress/savegames every time...or start over from 0 after losing all data from a crash, as in your case.

Not sure which games actually offer it tho.

Yea, not a whole lot. Plants vs Zombies. Games like TF2 offer that, only because there are no save games and everything is stored in the cloud. *shrug* Sucks to lose your stuff. Backups.