[drgrim]

[B] My daughters laptop wouldnt start up windows the other morning when she wanted to dp her school work. The unit would boot up (it is old and slow) and eventually her wallpaper would appear..but thats all. I tried restarting in safe mode but still had no Icons etc. I rebooted and got a message (afterabout fifteen minutes of waiting ) saying that I could not write to C drive. After another reboot I managed to get scandisk up and it took three days to run its course finding over 200 bad sectors on the drive and fixing them. (???). Since that finished we are no better off. I still only have the wallpaper and when I hit CTRL/ALT/DEL I have nothing whatsoever on the program list. I browsed some other forums last night and found I could get to the menu where I could choose from safe mode, command prompt etc and did the scanreg/restore taking it back to its earliest configuration. The only difference that made was that when I hit CTRL/ALT/DEL I had just one program on the list. I have no idea what it was or what it was called. I tried booting it from a boot disk and that stopped the windows title screen from loading but nothing else happened. I put the win98 cd in and restarted but still nothing happened. According to scandisk there is planty of good sectors left on the hard drive and I wondered if it would be possible to format the hard drive and reinstall windows??Can anyone help???

Edited by drgrim, 22 May 2005 - 06:59 PM.

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[coachwife6]

Can you run a hijack this log?

Please Click here!, and follow the recommendations in the guide.

If you're still having trouble, We'll need you to use a free diagnostic tool, Hijack This. Follow the instructions in step five of this guide, and post your log as a new topic in the Hijack This forum. It will get a better response there from the people most qualified to analyze logs.

Most of what Hijack This lists lists will be harmless or even essential, DO NOT delete or modify anything yet! Someone will be along to tell you what steps to take after you post the contents of the scan results.

[drgrim]

I cant run any programs , Including hijack this, on the computer. I cant run anything at all!!! I dont have it installed on the laptop but I do on my desktop unit. I cant even install it to run it!!!!
I cant do any thing at all on it!!!! The only things I can do with it are access the bios, access the menu to select safe mode, command prompt...etc and once windows has finally started I can se the desktop wallpaper and access the running programs menu via ctrl/alt/del.

Sorry, I misunderstood. I will leave this for the 95/98 guys.

Edited by drgrim, 22 May 2005 - 08:54 AM.

[gerryf]

....well

Yes, it would be possible to reinstall windows on the bad drive

...but

I would advise against it.

If it had that many bad sectors, your drive is failing. You may get a little time out of it, but the system is likely to continue failing and getting worse.


1 to 10 bad sectors....well, maybe, but 200+

Get a new harddrive

[drgrim]

I agree with you that a new hard drive would be the way to go but it isnt an option thats open to me at the moment as I am out of work and refuse to go on welfare/social security. If possible I would like to try to keep it going , at least for a while..even if temporary, so my daughter can still use it for her school work. Does any one know of any way I can format the drive and reinstall windows???

[gerryf]

yes, grab a bootdisk from www.bootdisl.com

expand to a floppy

reboot with floppy

at a: prompt, type

format c:

reinstall windows.

[gerryf]

that means you lose all data, though

[drgrim]

Ok...that sounds fair..but I wasnt able to get the PC to boot from a boot disk at all. If I bring up the command prompt can I just do it from there? Or do I need to boot up with a boot disk before I try?
I figured that I would lose all data.