[NeonFx]

Hi Damien,

I'm sorry to say this but the fact that it's saying that you will need to run chkdsk means that the harddrive is dying. This is common (as all harddrives will fail sooner or later) and though running chkdsk can repair it temporarily, the symptoms progressed so quickly on your system that I believe that if we tried doing anything to the drive, we may be causing even more harm to it.

The best thing to do would be to purchase a new harddrive, load XP on it (yes, it does run much better on less capable hardware than Vista does), and add the harddrive with Vista on it as a secondary harddrive on the computer.

This way, you can try recovering what you need off the failing drive and have a good drive to copy it all to.

If however purchasing a new harddrive is not an option, and you can obtain a Vista DVD so we can run the chkdsk scan, we can attempt to recover data off of and essentially quarantine the bad sectors on the drive which may bring your system back to life, though I wont be able to guarantee it would last long after that.

Right now you want to avoid turning the PC on as any time the harddrive disks spend spinning may be making the problem worse.

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Hi Neon,

Theres nothing on the hard drive that i need as fortunately i saved important things to an external hd.
so if i were to reformat and load xp do you think it would operate ok

[damien2409]

Hi Neon,

Theres nothing on the hard drive that i need as fortunately i saved important things to an external hd.
so if i were to reformat and load xp do you think it would operate ok

[NeonFx]

Hi there,

I'm glad to hear there wasn't anything of consequence on the harddrive.

It's definitely worth it to try installing XP on the harddrive after reformatting as long as you keep in mind that it may not work. If it doesn't you'll probably need to get a new harddrive.

Let me know if I can be of any assistance with the reformat/reinstall.

[damien2409]

Hi Neon,

Thanks for all your help mate.. while I have you, My laptop is a hp6730b and I am wondering what a "decent" hardrive would be worth for it. (something heavy duty that will cop a pounding!) I have checked some ram out which is 4gb but not sure if it will take it. I mean if i were to get the hd i may aswell improve the ram.

If I were as rich as Bill gates (or a 100th for that matter) I would dedicate the rest of my life setting up my own private CIA/vigilanty army to track down the origin of these virus makers and crush every skull that had the minutest bit to do with it.. Could you imagine that satisfaction of kicking some Russians,chinese,eastern european's door in and kicking the S**T out of them!

Sorry about the agro mate but these people are WORSE than drug dealers!

[NeonFx]

Hey damien, I'm so sorry! I didn't realize you had replied to this topic. Harddrives all basically the same unless you're considering getting a Solid State Drive. You just want to make sure you get the right size (2.5 for most laptops) and one with plenty of room for your needs (250gb+). More RAM can never hurt

I know exactly how you feel about the malware programmers. It's the very reason I help online for free and why we have our free academy to teach people how to fight malware. Let me know if you want information on it

How did everything go with this computer?

[damien2409]

Hi Neon,

I am getting a new hard drive and some more ram shortly.. once again thanks for your help.. I would be interested in getting some tips as to protecting my computer a little more. While on the subject I am wondering what the best all round virus protection maybe? Also Is windows 7 a good option

Damien