"Morgans" wrote in message
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[...]
PS This is a different machine that I'm posting from. I think my hard
disk just croaked! :-(
Anyone? What does it mean, when it tries to boot, and the hard drive
starts right away, and sounds like it is scanning the same sector,
continuously.

Yup...that's probably a dead drive. If you haven't had it powered on for
too long in that state, it's possible a drive recovery service can get your
data back for you, but even in a simple case that kind of thing costs a
fortune ($1000 is the low end). Hopefully, you've got your important stuff
backed up and don't need anything like that.

The only odd part is that you say that your CD won't eject either (at least
when things are powered-up). I'm not used to optical drives caring whether
or not there's even a hard disk around, never mind what state it's in, in
order to obey the eject button on the front of the drive. That said, if
you've got a CD stuck in there, you can probably get it out without turning
the PC back on.

Most optical drives (and many other kinds of removeable media drives, for
that matter, like floppy drives) have a small hole on their front. A
paper-clip or similar sized object poked through the hole will push on a
lever that opens the drive so you can get your disc out.

Why you can't eject the disc with the power on I don't know. Maybe some
funny business with the IDE controller that E-Machines put into that PC or
something like that. If you expect to have to get data off the failed
drive, ejecting the disc with the power off is better anyway though (unless
you are willing to open up the PC case and unplug the power to the hard
drive altogether, so that the hard drive doesn't power up when the PC power
is turned on).

Pete