Re: Hard Disk Problems...


"Andy" <Andrew.whitelaw@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote in message
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"The Todal" <deadmailbox@xxxxxxxx> wrote in message
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You're all better at this than I am, and apologies as usual for posting
off topic, but once again I have a computer problem.

I downloaded and ran the trial version of Diskeeper (can I sue them?
Never mind) as a result of which my XP installation will no longer boot
up. There is a black screen and a message about a missing file. When I
remove the HD and connect it to another computer the disk duly appears in
My Computer but when I try to view the contents I get a message that the
contents are corrupted and unreadable. So there seem to be file errors
and I'm assuming its a software problem rather than a hardware problem
because it was fine before Diskeeper ran.

Before I am forced to reformat and reinstall XP thereby losing all files
that I hadn't yet backed up, are there any steps I could usefully take?
If I run the Recovery Console, which commands might be helpful?

Stick in your windows XP disk and boot to the CD (you may need to enter
BIOS setup by pressing either del or F12 and set the boot options to boot
from CD first).
Enter the recovery console and type "chkdsk C: /r"
This will scan the whole disk and attempt to recover and correct any
errors.

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/314058 gives information on how to use
the recovery console.

If it finds and fixes errors and it still does not boot up then you may
have to use Fixboot, FixMBR or BootCFG.

Failing that download a bootable linux like knoppix or DamnSmallLinux and
burn it to a CD. Strangely enough linux sometimes can read Microsoft's own
disk format when microsoft's own systems can't. If you can see any files
then you can copy you Documents & Settings folder to another HDD, most of
your data etc should be there.

Thanks, Andy. I think the Chkdsk has made the files readable so it should
now be possible to copy them over before reformatting the original hard disk
and I can go from there.

Enough with my off-topic problems. I'm not suing anyone over this.


.

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