Advice Needed After Scare With Pc Tonight!

ksh123

albertross wrote:

There are two types of corruption, logical and physical. Logical means the magnetic recording is corrupt, so Windows can't read a file or two, which is not fatal, especially as the PC is working. Physical means the hard disk is on it's way out.

I haven't seen any post which suggests this is a physical problem yet, so don't go blowing money on new hard disks yet.

Have you tried chkdsk yet? If so, what did it say?

This software will give you an indication if the disk is really dying or not:

http://www.passmark.com/products/diskcheckup.htm

If your raw read error and write error counts are zero, the disk is probably ok.

when I set about trying to do this earlier I was unable to boot for ages because the Acrnis software kept jumping in and preventing Windows from starting up. I tried lots of different things to get round it, work with it etc. to no avail.
So then I booted up from the XP disc which stopped Acrnis but still wouldn't start up Windows as it kept saying the C drive was/is corrupted and unrepairable.
Finally got on after about 10 tries using the XP disc and then got rid of Acrnis as I couldn't have that happening again.....
Started trying to back up files. ! disc was OK the next 3 went through the process at the end of which each time I got the message that "there was an error writing to the CD". This was on 3 different brand new CDs.
Elected to save selected files and try again later. Now can't find the files......

Going back to what you said about chkdsk I will try that again but it will have to be tomorrow because I am very tired and brain is hurting greatly. Incidentally, is chkdsk the same as scandisk?? Just curious.

Please tune in for the next instalment tomorrow always assuming I can boot the thing up....


thanks again

ksh123

"If your raw read error and write error counts are zero, the disk is probably ok. "

They are!!! so I am guessing this is good. I feel invigorated now and will perform chkdsk immediately

thanks albertross

albertross_2

yes it's the same sort of thing as scandisk.

start, run, cmd
chkdsk c: /f/r

then reboot. it will check the c: drive before windows starts.

ksh123

Just wanted to say thanks to everyone for their advice when my pc was going do-lally recently and apologise for not posting an update.
I don't want you to think I am ungrateful - I just got bogged down by LIFE!

Anyway, thankfully, it wasn't the hard drive. In fact I don't know what it was lol but re-installing Windows XP solved the problem. The worst part was trying to find my XP key code. I tore apart the house and garage looking for the damn thing. Took about 6 hours before I found it - stuck to the side of the tower I can't see!

Ah well, more lessons learned

Thanks to one and all for sage advice.