Hard drive failure?

Foxspeed

My nephew's Dell PC has broken down and I wondered if anyone can help here.

We are thinking its hard drive failure.
It will boot up so far then gets the BSOD with various error codes, so I decided to hook up my old hard drive that still has Windows 7 on it (his PC has XP installed) and it boots up different and goes into a repair mode which inevitably fails.

So what can I do to get my hard drive formatted for him to try out if I can't boot up from an O/S disc?

closed

bsod's are usually software problems

if it's a dell, it may have a factory restore partition

if you use it, backup data first using another machine or caddy

macman

Run the Dell diagnostics program at boot up, that will check the hardware including the hard drive.
BSOD's can be caused by many things other than a failed drive: other bad hardware, or a corrupted OS.

Foxspeed

macman wrote: »

Run the Dell diagnostics program at boot up, that will check the hardware including the hard drive.
BSOD's can be caused by many things other than a failed drive: other bad hardware, or a corrupted OS.

I ran that and as the picture shows, the hard drive passed.
The PC boots up to the Windows XP screen before I get the blue screen.

Not sure why the colours have messed up too, I believe it was ok before he dropped it off at my house.

http://i76.photobucket.com/albums/j29/Foxy_UK/screen1.jpg

http://i76.photobucket.com/albums/j29/Foxy_UK/Capture-25.jpg

S0litaire

Check this page from Microsoft:
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/330134
Looks like it's a problem with a backup software called "Roxio GoBack"
Try the fix suggested and see if it makes any difference.

To work around this issue, disable GoBack when Windows XP Setup restarts the computer:

Warning If you disable GoBack, all historical GoBack-related information is lost, and you cannot use GoBack to restore your computer to an earlier state.
Restart your computer, and then press the SPACEBAR when you receive the GoBack "Press SPACEBAR to repair problems or see other boot options" message.
On the GoBack Boot menu, click Disable GoBack, and then click Continue.
Click Yes to disable GoBack.
After you disable GoBack, click OK, and then click Continue.

Foxspeed

Thanks for the tip but I don't see anything related to GoBack on the screen. All I can see is what you can see in the two screenshots that I posted.

chunter

Best way of finding out is get the hard drive out of the pc and put into another as a secondary drive, or into a usb hard drive caddy.

I fancy it's a hard drive corruption rather than a hard drive failure.
But it may be the first signs of a drive starting to go.

With the process mentioned you can at least get all your docs off the hard drive.
After that I'd either use the recovery partion or reformat or reinstall.

Could be a drive tettering or could be a virus corrupting files.
If the drive is working ok in the 2nd pc, it's probably corrupted files somewhere on the disk, for which I'd reformat.

Foxspeed

Update:

I found my old XP disc and I then got the option to boot from it using F12. I did that and got to the repair screen but needed an admin password which I assume would be from Dell? Anyway, I skipped that and managed a fresh install using another product key which is a shame because he has a genuine key. At least I now know the hardware is ok.

Thanks for the help everyone, I'm still a learner and always willing to learn.

macman

No, the admin password is the one set on the PC's administrator account-that is set by the user, not by Dell.

Foxspeed

macman wrote: »

No, the admin password is the one set on the PC's administrator account-that is set by the user, not by Dell.

DOH !!!

Well I won't tell him if you don't.;)

TBH, he wasn't bothered about saving any data anyway.