Ok this computer is about 1 year old and I have noticed that the hard drive would make some weird grinding and clicking noises at time's and sometimes the computer would just shut down out of no where. I went to turn it on today and I got a message that said C:/WINNT/????? (I forgot exactly) cannot be found or is corrupted. I then restarted and held F8 to try and revert to Last Known Good config and it still would not boot with the same message. I then used the Windows CD to boot to the recovery console and the C:/WINNT drive did appear as #1 and I tried to run CHKDSK /p and it only got 25% through when it said it could not complete because there is errors or corruption on the drive. Now everytime I start the computer it gives me a message saying there is a problem with the Hard Drive please contact Gateway troubleshooting guide, and I can no longer even boot with F8 as a message appears saying "Disk read error". I get the impression the Hard drive may be toast but what is the best way for me to verify this besides booting to the Windows CD and reformatting.
jdbaker82
0
Junior Poster in Training
DMR
152
Wombat At Large
Team Colleague
Unfortunately, given the series of events you describe, it does sound like the drive has gone south. If the disk corruption is serious enough, or if the problem is the result of a failure of the drive's controller electronics, chances are that you may not even be able to reinstall.
At this point I'd suggest installing the drive as a slave drive in another computer. Doing so might at least allow you to access the drive and copy your data to a safe location.
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