I used the wrong recovery disk! help please!

pinkpinkfizz

Hi,

I can't believe I've been so stupid! :doh: My old packard bell pc had crashed big time previous thread here

https://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/discussion/2584405

So I've been thinking about trying to fix it for ages and tried to recall where I put the little red recovery floppy that (i thought) came with that pc. I had a eureka :idea: moment and found it in the loft. Stuck it in the pc and off it set doing a recovery - or so I thought. I momentarily saw something about "installing windows 98" but ignored it however when the recovery didn't work.. it halts looking for something to boot.. It started me thinking and I've used a recovery floppy for my old old pc as the packard bell was windows vista os. I vaguely recalled making master disks,(which I found today) and I've tried to put them in but it doesn't "do" anything.

First question, Is it just broken? lol, sorry I know thats probably just stating the obvious.

second question, Is there anything I can do to make it work again? :think:

I dont have a recovery floppy/disk ( I really can't think where it would be) but I do have the master disks.

I can't believe I did this, I'm SO annoyed at myself!

Can anyone help please?

Thanks in advance

tomsolomon

Judging by your previous post, and the fact that you tried to install Win98 over the top of Vista via a floppy disk, and it's not finding anything when you boot I would probably say your HDD has failed. Probably because it was failing and you ran chkdsk so many times while it was failing you probably totally killed it, when you should have been copying your files and photos onto an external drive instead of following advice from some of the wannabe's on here. Any way, go to Ebuyer but an new HDD reinstall your OS and away you go, you might be lucky and plug your old HDD into another machine as a slave and recover some of your data.... might...;-)

pinkpinkfizz

Thanks for taking the time to read my post and offer advice.

I don't have any files that I've lost (thankfully I'm in the habit of regularly backin up) and as the pc is around 10 years old I did wonder if it had given up the ghost!

I've never installed a new hard drive - Is it easy/ straight forward to do?

I wondered about trying a linux install just to see if the Hdd is dead, but wasn't sure if that would work given the fact that I've done a pretty useless job of trying to recover the system already?

Cheers
Donna

tomsolomon

You are looking at around £30-£40 for a HDD and the same to have it installed if you go to a shop.
And by shop I don't mean peeee.......
PEEEEEEEE...........
PEEEEEEEEEEEE SEEEEEEEEEEEEEE.....
You know that where in the world place.........

pinkpinkfizz

tomsolomon wrote: »

And by shop I don't mean peeee.......
PEEEEEEEE...........
PEEEEEEEEEEEE SEEEEEEEEEEEEEE.....
You know that where in the world place.........

I HATE that place with a passion!! Utterly useless!!

I'll get my screwdriver out tomorrow and have a look at the brand of hdd and price around on the www.

Thanks

tomsolomon

Yea just pull it out and look at the end of it. If it's got pins it's PATA, if it's got 2 little 'L' shaped connectors it's SATA.
Then just go here http://www.ebuyer.com/ get the one you need, connect it all back together, and run your installation.
By the way, your recovery disks may not work anymore, so you will need an operating system disk, but you can use the COA sticker on the side of your case, so you shouldn't need to buy another licence.....
Oh and bin that floppy disk before any more accidents occur....;)

sharkie

tomsolomon wrote: »

Judging by your previous post, and the fact that you tried to install Win98 over the top of Vista via a floppy disk, and it's not finding anything when you boot I would probably say your HDD has failed. Probably because it was failing and you ran chkdsk so many times while it was failing you probably totally killed it, when you should have been copying your files and photos onto an external drive instead of following advice from some of the wannabe's on here. Any way, go to Ebuyer but an new HDD reinstall your OS and away you go, you might be lucky and plug your old HDD into another machine as a slave and recover some of your data.... might...;-)

Another idea:- How about the pc was formated with ntfs, and 98 only recogises fat? Also 98 had a max of 4gb size too, think vista needed more much more than that, so that partition would not be recognised? Did you not have to partition 98 manually?

I have not played with 98 for years though, so a bit uncertain

just bung in the vista cd and see how far you get, you have nothing to loose

TwistedPsycho

tomsolomon wrote: »

Yea just pull it out and look at the end of it. If it's got pins it's PATA, if it's got 2 little 'L' shaped connectors it's SATA.
Then just go here http://www.ebuyer.com/ get the one you need, connect it all back together, and run your installation.
By the way, your recovery disks may not work anymore, so you will need an operating system disk, but you can use the COA sticker on the side of your case, so you shouldn't need to buy another licence.....
Oh and bin that floppy disk before any more accidents occur....;)

Surely its more likely to be an IDE HDD?

kwikbreaks

Why on earth would (s)he need a new HDD. All that is necessary is to boot from the recovery CD/DVD and restore the original system from that. This usually requires a PF key to be pressed and/or a CMOS setting change to boot from the CD/DVD drive first

tomsolomon

BSOD with disk errors would indicate the HDD was failing. The fact that the drive was failing the OP installed 98 over the top and cant even boot the PC now suggests that the HDD has totally failed during the process, but without looking at it who could say? My money is on failed HDD though.

IDE is a standard not a type of drive....
It stands for integrated drive electronics, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parallel_ATA

pinkpinkfizz

Just to add that I was wondering the "safest" way to shut it down, without causing any further problems, and i managed to get it to a box with recovery options. From there it ran a hard drive check and it says zero errors found?!

What do I do now?