m11x r1 - boots to black screen after initial alienhead logo

I was browsing the internet and chatting on skype on my m11x r1. Suddenly it started to choke to the point where it froze and gave me some weird error about some system "dll" that might not be compatible with my version of windows... Now that I think about it, could it be a virus? When I noticed it wouldnt recover and that it in fact was frozen I shut it down by holding the power button. When I turned it back on I noticed the progress bar below the alienhead logo (on boot) was loading much slower than usual. I let it do its thing (even though ut was taking much longer than usual) and then it proceeded to the black screen with the white blinking cursor. This second screen was taking forever as well and the hdd activity lights where on for a long time... After that, it went to a black screen (no white cursor) and it stayed like that forever. I tried several times with the same results

Three days ago I turned OC on just to try it out so i went into the bios and turned it back off. Tried to boot again but the problem persists.

This is quite strange.. I dont even know what to search for to find a solution.

Any ideas would be great! Thanks!

Alex

 

Could be a virus. Sounds like your Windows is pretty messed up though

Do you have a recovery point or backup you've made recently? If not, you might have to resort to reinstalling Windows or chucking in another HDD and a fresh Windows installation before you reformat yours, just to make sure it isn't a hardware issue.

 

Here are my discoveries...

About a month or so ago I purchased a new hard drive (750gb 7200rpm) to replace the original (160gb 5400rpm). I thought It might be a hard drive issue so I replaced the new with the old and it boots just fine. I'm no expert when it comes to hard drives and their errors so here are my questions. Could this be a software issue (i.e. windows installation went crazy and became corrupt?) or does this mean the hard drive is dead and there is no way for me to bring it back to life.

The one thing I managed to do was run the diagnostics tool upon boot and i got the following error for the hard drive: "error code 2000-0151"
According to this website my hard drive is "toast" LOL, that sucks if thats the case...

@Rypac Thanks for your input. It would be great if I could restore from a recovery point but upon launch I hit F8 and it never offers the option to safe mode.

 

Update...

Used an enclosure to connect the hard drive as an external one via usb. When I connect it to a computer windows recognizes it as a hard drive but says its not accessible and that access is denied. Does this mean its completely dead and I lost all my data? Or are there ways or special software I might be able to use to access some of the data in there?

I contacted amazon and it seems they will provide a replacement which is great news considering its been a little over 30 days since i purchased it.

Alex