:sad: my pc is a emachin 80gb h/d,512 mb of memory. athon prosessor2.1ghz. i went into the check local disk utilities & did scan for & attempt recovery of bad sectors. pc was starting act funny. window poped up in the system tray saying something about memory was getting low. did a mem test utility & it passed. the memory is at 488 mb. anyway in chkdsk i clicked on scan for & attempt to recover bad sectors. it went all the way to phase 4 & bar went to the end & acted like it froze. not knowing later that it might have taken all night, i thougt it froze & tried to close it out & also tried to do a restart & no such luck. so then a did a very lg. mistake by unplugging it . a big no no. i found out about that later after surfing the net for help. when i turned it back on it booted to a dark screen w/ some kind of garble at the top to center also had at the top at first that said <windows root>/system32hal.dll. then scrolled down to the bottom & said boot c: twice then below that it said press ctrl-alt-del to continue. it showed this every time i rebooted but did'nt say windows root message anymore. i tried installing my operating cd's that came w/ it disk 1 1st & said i would lose all the data if continued. so i removed it. did a pcbeginner h/d test long scan & came up giving me a error code d7a5aa7b which means the drive was failing. & said for me to do a back up. but i can't boot to windows to do this. i want to do a repair w/ my cd's emachine said on chat that i would have a 91% chance to retieve all my data. they sold me some software that cost me $60.00 cause i was desperate. all my important data is on that drive. it was at the d: drive sacnning it when this happened. does this mean i've lost all my data or is there another solution? it may be next week before i get the software which is a package of 4 cd's. any help would be appreciated please!!!. sorry for the long post but i did'nt want to miss anything. thanks for any replies.:mrgreen:

best thing to do is remove your failing harddrive and have it installed in another computer as slave and copy important data to drive of other computer,

thanks! caperpjack for responding. i will have to do some more studying on this procedure you recommended. i know how to swap the hard drive to my other pc, & set my jumpers & cables, but it might get a little tricky for me to figure out how to perform task on going through the procedure step by step so i don't make any mistakes. if you have any comments on how to perform this after i install it, i would greatly appreciate it. i've been doing alot of research on this type of procedure & getting a somewhat familiar w/ it. i was just wondering does it sound like to you with me not being able to boot to windows xp that this procedure will work? will i need some type of software to do this or just use my oem software that came w/ my pc? i have about 4 differant pc lying around in my workshop ready to use. could i possibly go in & try to do a repair from my xp cd's? thanks again!

one more thing i'd like to add. the machine will boot from floppy & cdrom drive. so that tells me they recognize c: drive. remember i said it was in the process in phase 4 of the d: drive when i pulled the plug, so that makes me think my c: drive was safe. just a thought. i also pulled the d/d out & plugged it back in & put up to ear laying it in the same position that it sits in the case so not to tilt the heads & cause any disturbance to it & turned it on & heard it spin up & heard very faint clicks & turned it back of & heard the clicks again telling me that the h/d was still functioning properly.

if any file remain on you old drive ,its just a simple drag and drop to the working computers harddrive ,through the window file manager, shortct to that is the windows key +E, no software needed ,then when you get a new harddrive and install windows on it ,you can slave it back to the other computer and copy the files back to the new drive and then put it back in your computer .Giving all i said you may not beable to axcess the drive for varisous reasons ,the main one beinf a hardware failure of the drive ,i have one here now that im trying to get files off ,but can't and never will .it spins with a lot of clicking but is not seen by my computer . !

thank you very much, i'll give it a shot. does the good h/d from another machine have to have the same operating system?

this h/d is a ntfs partician not fat 32. the other computers i have in my room are a fat32 & not as lg. as the corrupted one which is a 80gb h/d. one a 14 gb & the other is a 30gb.

win98 will not see the ntfs

:mrgreen: thanks for the input caperjack. i have a gateway tower my brothr in law is bringing back to me soon & it has w2000 on it & has a 30gb h/d & is particianed on a fat 32. does the hard drive have to be on a ntfs partician to work or will i have to reload xp on it at ntfs & load my bad h/d files,if its recoverable on the d drive or what ever letter is next in line? its a good pc. i'm kind of glad he's bringing it back. i gave it to his family as a gift & they don't trust getting on the internet for security reasons. i also have a dell server that i've been trying to load xp pro on & was going to use that one :mad: but i don't have time to mess w/ trying to figure out whats going on w/ it. it had blue screen of death:eek: poping up on it every time i installed xp pro. had to go back & dump it & reload it. no such luck. thanks for reading this.;)

:mrgreen: one small question not related to this. tried to get a response from webmaster but how do you set the post to read in bold letters prefrences. sorry can't spell.:sad: :cool:

good! i have a brand new copy. i hace 1 pc that has w2000 on it. the others have xp home & pro on them.

:mrgreen: good! i have a brand new copy. i have 1 pc that has w2000 on it. the others have xp home & pro on them. they all have smaller hdd's & not as fast as the emachine. my wife is getting very nervous afraid she's lost all her backgrunds & smileys she bought off incredimail.i'm ony interested in getting back all my documents & email folders & messages & settings.:rolleyes:

my wife is getting very nervous afraid she's lost all her backgrunds & smileys she bought off incredimail.

LOL

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