#!%#*! Computer Again!

Josh K said:
What do you mean "pass all the test" ? :confused:

That's windows booting off of the CD drive, nothing to do with the hard drive.
Click to expand...

The tests I'm referring to are in the Utility Partition which I assume in on the hard disk. It has extensive tests for all the hardware devices including the cables. On my computer it is accessed from the Boot Device Menu (F12 key at start up)) which has nothing to do with the Windows CD.

It is obvious that I am no computer expert, but it seems to me that if I can access stuff on the hard disk, it may not be a hardware problem.

I don't know if all computers have this. It may be a Dell thing.
 
UffDa said:
The tests I'm referring to are in the Utility Partition which I assume in on the hard disk. It has extensive tests for all the hardware devices including the cables. On my computer it is accessed from the Boot Device Menu (F12 key at start up)) which has nothing to do with the Windows CD.

It is obvious that I am no computer expert, but it seems to me that if I can access stuff on the hard disk, it may not be a hardware problem.

I don't know if all computers have this. It may be a Dell thing.
Click to expand...

Get a live cd (Ubuntu) and boot up off of that. If the hard drive is fine you should be able to access it.
 
UffDa said:
The tests I'm referring to are in the Utility Partition which I assume in on the hard disk. It has extensive tests for all the hardware devices including the cables. On my computer it is accessed from the Boot Device Menu (F12 key at start up)) which has nothing to do with the Windows CD.

It is obvious that I am no computer expert, but it seems to me that if I can access stuff on the hard disk, it may not be a hardware problem.

I don't know if all computers have this. It may be a Dell thing.
Click to expand...
I just remembered that the last time I performed the exorcism on this Dell laptop I could not find my XP disc. The routine I sent you is using the XP disc to get to the command line. I held the F8 key down during boot-up to get to the boot menu. Once there, I arrowed down pass safe mode etc. to the "Windows command" entry. Once you get the blank screen with just the blinking caret you're where you want to be to work that routine I sent you. I've also done a few computers booting from A: drive with a boot floppy and jumping to the C: drive with the "chdir C:" command. It is probably a Dell thing in that I think Dell reserves a little piece of the hard disk like a partition for their own recovery console. I was in the same situation as you with this Dell laptop, I think the F8 route will work. Good luck.
 
I'd carefully remove the current suspect hard drive, and install a new one. Then I'd install XP to the new drive. Then I'd put the old drive back into the system as an additional, second hard drive.

The brand new drive will contain the operating system, act as the boot drive and get you up and running again.

The second drive (your original suspect drive), if accessible, should have all of your important files intact so you can copy them.

I've done this a number of times. I actually keep a spare hard drive (or three) around the house just for this purpose (I do a lot of PC/Laptop repair for family and friends).
 
It sound like maybe your drive designation information got screwed up. It happened to me once when a re-partition operation failed midway. All of my information was still there, but the partition program hadn't gotten to the point of assigning drive letters to anything yet, so I had two partitions showing up as unregistered space. Fortunately, I was able to install Vista on one of the partitions which was my intention anyway (IIRC, there was an option for this in the Vista installer.)

It also assigned information to the other partition as well, so all's good now.
 
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