blue screen

[gregers]

turn my desktop on today,all seemed to be working fine.plugged in a memory stick to drag some files over again no problem.os is a 40gb drive running xp home,
clicked to open up my slave drive(160 gb)to transfere some files over and the whole lot froze,turned the computer off and waited,restarted and got blue screen,and keep on getting it.went through trying different ways of attempting to get it to start i:e safe mode,last known good etc etc and got blue screen again.
i tried the xp disk to repair wasnt having any of it,
now the question is,is the 40 gb drive fubared,or is there anyway i can get the info off of it??there are a few photos n there and other bits i would like to get off of it,but ive a feeling im going to have no luck.
any pointers peeps??plz

 

[ChrisJ78]

I take it you removed the USB stick?

Can you use the repair option on the XP CD to do a chkdsk /R from your post I see the repair install of XP didn't work. Did the CD see the HDD?

You can get the pics off your 40gig disk, but you'll need another computer to plug it in as a slave to or a USB drive bay.

Try unplugging the slave drive (160 gig one) and see what happens. When did you install the new slave drive?

 

[gregers]

cheers chris,
the slave has been in for a few years,just for info its a moody xp.but running fine for a few years
have tried unplugging the slave,so it was just the os h/drive running and got b/screen again.
even plugged in a spare 40 gb drive and that didnt get reconized
tried putting the 160 as master and the os 40 gb drive as slave.didnt work so put it all back as was tried again and got the b/screen again.
yep did remove the usb stick.

 

[topbloke77]

Hi mate, Sounds like your 40gb hdd could be on its way out and has corrupted some OS files, hence the blue screen.

As the above post suggests your 1st move should be attempting a CHKDSK (checkdisk). You can run this from the windows XP install CD. This can pften recover bad parts of the harddisk and recover corrupt files.

An easier solution might be to get your hands on ERD Commander. This is the ultimate tool for getting XP PCs back to life. Its really easy to use and lets you use windows restore, without going into windows. It would also let you browse your 40gb disk without windows starting up, and copy files off to a usb drive.

If you know how to use torrent downloads you should be able to download (on a working pc) a good boot cd.

Your other option is to put in a new disk and reinstall XP from scratch. Then out your 40Gb disk as a 2nd drive. If the disk is not totally corrupt you should be able to read some/most/all of your data.

If the disk is not reading at all you would need to go down the road of data recovery...which is another topic in itself.

Good luck

 

[gregers]

top bloke, thanx for that,if ive got time at the weekend im going to give it a try with another 40 gb drive new install,plug old drive in and hopefully i can get all or any info off of it????
then if successful put a hammer through the old 1 so i dont put it back in again in weeks time.

 

[topbloke77]

if you can get your faulty 40gb disk to be seen in windows as 2nd disk run check disk before trying to copy files.

if your disk gets seen as a d: drive
goto start menu
type CMD in the run box
in the black window type CHKDSK d: /f

(sorry to over explain things, if you already know how to do this)

Totally advise you to get your hands on a copy of ERD Commander. Its the secret of many IT engineers. I have rescued dozens of PCs with it.

 

[opps]

If the drive is failing then I would strongly recommend you make an image of it immediately.

you can do this with Easeus and if need be you can use it recover your files.

 

[gregers]

hi peeps,all sorted out now soz for the delay in getting back to you all who offered advice,swapped the old for the new 40 gb drive,installed fresh windows xp,connected old drive and done a scan and it came up with various sector problems.let it do its bussiness and hey presto it came back to life and i managed to retrieve what i wanted.hurrah,many thanx.

gregers