Can't Boot Into Xp Pro

[adams]

well i was just browsing a little while ago and my computer locked up. couldn't move the mouse and hitting down ctrl + alt + delete wouldn't do anything either.

So i rebooted and it just hung on the windows is starting up screen (where the blue boxes move), so i pushed the reset button again, this time after the post it said it couldn't read from the disk. So I pushed ctrl+alt+delete and rebooted yet again. This time I booted into safe mode w/networking and looked at my 80gb cause that is where most of my important stuff is and it seems to be ok. So I restarted (using start, shutdown method) and tried to boot into xp again. It hung on that screen again (I let it be like that for a good 5 minutes and nothing happened). So now I'm typing this in safe mode w/networking. Now one of those times when it was starting up the hard drive sounded horrible, like it was grinding against something (not its normal sound).

Does all this mean my hd is dead or what? Is there anything I can do about it? (It's not under warranty anymore. Probably over 3 years old.) It's a 40gb Seagate. Is there any tests I can run on it to check it?

specs:
windows xp pro
512MB 3200 DDR
40GB seagate hd
80gb maxtor hd
120gb maxtor hd
athlon xp 2500+ (barton)
geforce 2 ti 64mb ddr
(that should be everything important)

thanks in advance.

[Thankbot]

6 Users already said Thank You!

ironleg1963, war59312, kernel, Dartman, Bads, Grzyb,

[tnc]

sorry to hear that you are having trouble.

What I would do first is to move anything over to your d or e drive that you want to back up (or save to cd) inc. addresses from email, favorites, received files, chat logs and any emails you want saved...

Next... I would unplug my d and e drive, open the side.. (Maybe give the inside a little dusting with air just for fun : ) ) and I would restart and listen to make sure where the noise is coming from.

I am not sure about this site, but I know for a fact that I just moved a whole pile of tutorials over on how to revive a hdd on rws. (www.rwsbetas.com You may want to have a look at those.

If your hdd is dying and it is the c.. just make sure you don't save anything to it that you don't want to lose.. esp. pictures of family, important letters etc. Also, if the drive is faulty, do call whoever made the drive. Some drives have a longer warrantee than others. Maybe you will get lucky here. Some of our drives have the warrantee date on them? others don?t

Good luck

[tnc]

Hard drive gone bad


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http://www.rwsbetas.com/index.php?showtopic=174

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[tnc]

two hundred ways to revive a hard drive

[Dudelive]

By now you probably have done this....but in case you have not, turn off the computer and unplug it for quite some time and let it "cool "off as too say. It work some times.
Good Luck

Thanks
Dudelive

[adams]

dudelive, yea i turned it off for the night and turned it on again at lunch and i didn't have any problems. ran scandisk and it didn't come up with anything either.