Dear friends, Here's the short of it, running XP home. Son wa shutting down computer and got the blue screen of death, he can't remember the exact error but said" If this is the first time seeing this message resart computer and if not, fallow these directions". Weeellll he did not quit do either, he unplugged it When I started it back up it ran thru a scan disk. Now, when I turn it on, it will go thru the normal start screen, run thru the settings and start the WINDOWS screen. After the WINDOWS screen goes away it NORMALLY will blink a curser on a blank sceen a few seconds and the go to the user page, but all it does is goes to a blank (black) screen and stay there for about a minute, thenm the hard drive will make a small noise and the computer will restart all over again. Is this a bad hard drive or Windows operating system????? Any info would be very much appreciated.... Would doing a "chkdsk /r/f" do any good booting off the Windows CD? thanks
NOT WHAT I WANTED TO HEAR//// Is there any thing I can do to varify???? or check???? before insatll a whole new HD???? PLZZZZ
I would try that first. Hopefully it will work, and he won't lose any important data on his computer.
@jobrla What you could do is this. If you know your hard-drive is bad (which is what it seems to be ) I would unplug the ide/sata and power cables from it and set the jumper cables to slave (ide drives only!). I would then install the new hard-drive and install Windows on it. Make sure your bad drive is unplugged before you do this! After Windows is installed on the new hard-drive.. plug the old/bad hard-drive in making sure that it is set as the slave drive and the new hard-drive is the master. Boot up, go to "My Computer" and see what you can save off it. That was just a general overview of what to do/how to do it. If you don't find detailed enough I can redo it.
Thank you all for your responce, I did a chkdsk /r and it said it found a few bad items but repaird them, tried to restart but with same outcome. All the tests I do says the HD is OK, I do have an external HD (that I never used as a back up) good job!!! and I also have a spare internal that I may use. Is it possible to try and re-install XP home over itself without loosing to much, or wwould I have to partition and install it on it??? thanks
as you have a spare internal that i presume is empty, set it as master & sick 1 as slave or offline. load xp onto master than access the sick 1 to retrieve any info you want saved. delete partition & make a new partition before formating sick drive. offline new master hd & put sick hd back as master to load xp on it & to retrieve info off spare hd as long as sick hd works properly.
Thanks ddp, One last question and I'll spot bothering u guys, is there any way of tring to re-install Windows on this drive as it sets??? I have done thid with 98 with no problems when I had problems and it saved all my settings, will this, or can this, be done with XP Home???
it can be done. check these 2 links. http://www.windowsreinstall.com/winxphome/installxpcdrepair/indexfullpage.htm http://www.michaelstevenstech.com/XPrepairinstall.htm
it can be done, but no one is going to recommend it. if it works, you're going to have a buggy installation that is liable to crash again quickly. best case scenario is that it works long enough back stuff up. you probably won't get complete and full fuctionality. worst case is that it messes the data up on the drive enough that you have to pay a professional to recover your data. it's more than worth the effort to bring a second drive into the situation. *edit* well, ddp seems to think it will be okay; trust him over anyone else. ^.^
i normally use a spare hd to get a fresh install of windows so can copy info off the other drive, format it than ghost spare hd onto original hd.
