Computer Failing - HELP! (1 Viewer)

[Kevin_Graham]

My computer is struggling to boot up the last 2 days. Once yesterday and today I've received a message during startup that tells me that my hard drive could possibly fail and that I should back up my data. Yesterday it ended up booting up ok but today was a different story. Today it took 15 minutes of rebooting to try and bring it up. When it finally brought up my XP desktop the border colors had changed from blue to grey. The menus have also changed to grey. It now looks like an older version of windows.

So now I'm not sure what to do. It looks like I need a new hard drive. What's the best way to do this and keep all my data and settings? Do I have to start from scratch or can I copy one hard drive to the other? Once I have my new drive setup can I use the old one as a mirror drive or is it shot?

Thanks.
Kevin

XP
P4 1.6A
512MG

 

[Andre F]

I added a harddrive to my last PC from Maxtor (I know a lot of people don't like Maxtor...) and it went very smoothly. I put the drive in, didn't have to set master/slave settings and it came with a utility to copy everything over. I of course started fresh with a clean install after I was sure my data was safe. Still I would back before the big install....

 

[Mike_G]

I started typing this long description of what to do when I realized that everyone's computer is different .
Bottom line is this - you need a new hard drive and something to back the old one up with. I just bought Ghost 2003 and Ghost in the past has saved my ass many times. It allows you to make a hard drive->hard drive copy or hard drive->file "snapshot". I'd suggest getting that.
I'm not going to go into the technical details of how to add your new hard drive because I'm sure there are tons of internet resources for that.
Just make sure you don't erase your bad drive until you know that everything from it is backed up.
Mike

 

[Kevin_Graham]

If I'm going to install another hard drive can I make the new a secondary drive, copy everything then swap boot up drives or do I have to start fresh with the new drive? The failing drive is under a year old so I'm hoping I cann send it back to the manufacturer for repair or replacement. If I use this repaired disk as a mirror of my new hard drive due the drives have to be exactly the same model? What is the menu path in XP to make a floppy boot disk.

Thanks!

 

[Mike_G]

It depends. If you're using XP, no you can't. There's a boot sector that you can't "drag and drop" to your new drive. You need Ghost or something like it to dupe your first drive.

The drives don't have to be the same model. XP's pretty good with that. Different motherboards are a whole different issue.

I haven't dealt much with floppy boot disks on XP except I know that:

1) XP requires 4 boot floppies if you want to install XP from a CD that can't boot on its own.

2) When you format a floppy in XP, there's an "MS-DOS boot" option. I really don't know how much you get from that.


Mike

 

[Robert_Gaither]

I know this might sound strange (don't know the level of user you are) but have you (after getting the system booted back up) ever went to windows update and loaded up the patches (I had a computer a few years ago that kept crashing under 98 until I loaded up a few of the critical patches to stabilize it)?

 

[Max Leung]

Have you verified that the fans inside the case still spin? Just want to make sure you're not getting overheating problems from a failed/dirty fan!

I hope your powersupply isn't failing either (they usually fail when the fan seizes up).

 

[Kevin_Graham]

I installed a new identical hard drive and made it the primary drive. The failing disk is now disconnected. I have a couple of questions:

1. Both hard drives are now designated as C: drives. Is there a way to change the drive letter?

2. I don't want to use the import files/settings wizard. how do I transfer my Explorer favorites to the new drive?