HDD fubared?

[Lazarus]

Guys,

neighbours pc went belly up an he asked me to have a little look.

Looks to me like the HDD (or operating system) is fubared but need a second opinion before I take drastic steps.

Specs:

500 Mhz
64MB RAM
Windows 98
HDD - WD28400

now, not the best specs in the world but this guys isnt bothered - he only uses for the occasional game and surfing (job hunting)

When the PC is switched on, there is a solitary beep and then it goes into the bootup routine. One of 2 things now happens :

1. You get the Windows 98 splash screen, and then the screen disappears and the message slong the lines of error initialising VKD... appears. Worked this back to the keyboard not being plugged in properly.

2. General failure reading from drive c, retry, abort ignore, fail.

Now, If I boot straight to command prompt, I can run all the necessary DOS commands, but it WILL NOT boot to windows (even in safe mode)

I have scanned for virii - there are none present.

My "drastic" step is to format the whole drive (after copying off all the necessary files) and reformatting to windows 95 (cos I have the disk)

Is there anything else I can try before I do this?

 

[TdC]

WD? you may want to try their diagnostics stuff before you jump off the deep end matey. no idea if it helps though...but it may, it may.

 

[fatbusinessman]

Reformat sounds like your best option really. One thing that might be useful if you want to copy the files off a little more comfortably is Knoppix - it basically allows you to boot into a graphical environment (Linux/KDE) direct off a CD.

If you're not that familiar with Linux it should pretty much be a matter of dragging and dropping - if you are familiar with Linux it can be a godsend.

 

[xane]

How did you run a virus check ?

I'd plug the disk into a working PC and run a check that way, or even a basic disk check.

(this is where one of these can come in handy, I used it the other day to replace a corrupted file on a Win 2K machine that prevented a boot).

 

[Lazarus]

How did you run a virus check ?

I'd plug the disk into a working PC and run a check that way, or even a basic disk check.

(this is where one of these can come in handy, I used it the other day to replace a corrupted file on a Win 2K machine that prevented a boot).

thats what i did xane - plugged the HDD into my machine and it worked no problems (didnt boot up from it tho)

 

[Lazarus]

WD? you may want to try their diagnostics stuff before you jump off the deep end matey. no idea if it helps though...but it may, it may.

Teedles

Downloaded the diags and run the basic test - nada!!!

copied ALL of the files from the drive onto mine (disk is connected to my machine atm)

then decided to do a thorough chaeck and this time is turned up some bad sectors. I can only imagine that the bad sectors are where some of the system files are located and causing it not to boot.

so - i reckon only a reformat / reinstall will work.

what I am looking to find (before I do that) is the file that contains the details for his dial up (i.e. logon and telephone number for ISP) cos I dont think he quite remembers

anyone give a pointer?

 

[Xavier]

No major loss if you can't recover it, just call his ISP for them.

You might want to ghost or back up the entire drive before reformatting, just in case0r.

Xav

 

[Lazarus]

No major loss if you can't recover it, just call his ISP for them.

You might want to ghost or back up the entire drive before reformatting, just in case0r.

Xav

Ive copied the ENTIRE contents of his drive onto PD and also onto my other hard drive. Hopefully I wont delete THAT by mistake!!!

Ill try reformatting tonite (if I can find tat damn Windows 95 disk [I think I may have tossed it!! ])

Thanks Xav

 

[xane]

what I am looking to find (before I do that) is the file that contains the details for his dial up (i.e. logon and telephone number for ISP) cos I dont think he quite remembers

anyone give a pointer?

They are under HKCU\RemoteAccess in the Registry, export it and import.

It might be an idea to convince him to upgrade to XP at this stage.

 

[Lazarus]

problem is xane - I cant get into windows to access the registry

and his system wont take XP (8GB HDD, 64MB ram.... 500Mhz processor)

 

[strangely brown]

If I remember rightly (been a few years since I've done it) you don't have to - You can run regedit from a DOS prompt to export the registry.

Went something like:-

regedit /e myfile.reg <registry key e.g. HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Windows>

There are some specific switches to get the correct user registry but I can't remember them off the top of my head. Try a google...

Regards,
SB