hi all,
my Xp is evil, its been dieing for quite a time now but ive managed to keep it alive, and even resusitate on occasion, but it has now been pronounced clinically deceased as of 18/09/06
in short. ive booted the drive from another drive with xp on it. scan disked it, several times. didnt help. using the recovery console on the install cd i tried writing a new boot partition, and later even a new mbr. still nothing.
so finally i did a repair on the installation with the windows installation cd. typed in the product key was all happy, when it finished the installation, it resarted my pc and reached where the loading screen should comeup.......and auto restarts. i know the easiest thing to do is just wipe the drive and do a reinstall. but ive kinda got over 50gb of installed programs and another 25 gb of files i would really like to not loose.
so, anysuggestions?
any help greatly appreciated.
I have the same problem with my computer, can anyone help? Thanks.
You've done just about everything you can - and you've been taking great risks with your data doing all that.
The important thing now is to find out if the drive is faulty or not and you're going to have to reformat or maybe run a HDD diagnostic tool - both of which will put your data at risk again.
Get it backed up while you can. If the disk were to fail completely you've lost it all. You still have a chance at the moment.
Then do the format and see what happens.
ive got norton ghost 8 so now all i need is another 80gb drive. hmmm.
my drive is a seagate 80gb sata drive thats only a year and a half old. so it really shouldnt be faulty. however ill find a program to run a disk diagnostic on it. thanks
btw. ive got a ram diagnostic tool if anyone would like it....once i get it off my pc, that is :D
You haven't got Norton GoBack on there by any chance, have you?
but if you can't actually start Windows, can you still use the diagnostic software?
Most RAM and HDD tools run from a boot disk, so yes you would be able to.
(running on family pc at moment aka P3 ponderous beast)
just downloaded the seagate dianostic program for my hdd, i had 5 bad sectors. :| ohh nooo, ofcourse id didnt wnat to fix them, dont know why. so i have now got quick recovery which if this is the quic ksetting id hate to see the raw recovery setting. anyway, it seems to be scanning my entire disk, + storing all of my directory information, taking a very long time (damn my 10k + folders) and then its supposed to...ah wait it doesnt do anymore, as i just discovered. boo.
so ive got this handy program now. its called
Stellar Smart (early disk warning system) you can find it here
http://www.stellarinfo.com/hard-drive-monitor.htm
and yes i can use the diag. software becuase im booting up on a different drive and accessing the bad drive frim it.
@ snowdog. what does norton goback do? i can guess the basics from the name. but was wondering the extent of what its capable
I was asking because if Norton GoBack is on there it can cause major, MAJOR problems.
We deal with a lot of machines which have the Norton package hard-sold (or given 'free') to the customer at the time of purchase and most times the box contains Norton Internet Security, Ghost (both 9 and 10, I think), and GoBack. People tend to install every disk without knowing what they do.
GoBack tries to be a million times cleverer than it is and supposedly enables you to roll your machine back to an earlier time if you encounter problems. But what it doesn't handle very well is when the problem is with it itself. If you uninstall it (and it will let you) it can sometimes takes 3, 4, 6, or more hours (gives you an idea of how much disk space it takes up). Something that big is a large target when the something-gone-wrong gremlin appears on the scene.
If GoBack is corrupted your machine is often toast unless you have actual Windows disks and can get to the recovery console or get hold of various boot disks that allow you to get to DOS. And even then you might still not get anywhere. It messes up the MBR in worst cases. And like other Norton products, getting rid of all trace isn't a walk in the park.
Many machines have a built-in recovery partition and GoBack can really mess that up. Customers then have to buy recovery disks from the manufacturer. Since they install GoBack immediately after purchase of the machine, they effectively wipe out their recovery option without knowing it within hours of purchase. And it doesn't become apparent until later.
Worse still, it is classed as customer-induced damage (software installation) so no warranty covers you.
I asked because if it is on there it can often explain a lot.
Incidentally, if your HDD scanner finds errors, let it fix them. If it can't, you have a real problem.
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