I apologize if this is in the wrong forum. Wasn't sure exactly where to place it.
Last night while gaming, my computer froze. I couldn't get to task manager with Ctrl+Alt+Delete, and ended up having to do a hard reset.
Then the computer wouldn't load windows. It gave an error stating ntoskernel and winload.exe were either corrupt or missing. I ran windows repair from the Vista install disc, and it replaced ntoskernel. Restart- winload.exe is still mising or corrupt. ran repair again, replaced winload. restarted, yet again. Then it told me Hal.dll was missing or corrupt. so I ran the repair utility yet again. This time it asked me during the scan if i wanted to do a system restore to an earlier point. I accidentally clicked yes, then cut the computer once I realized it. I don't want to loose any data unless ABSOLUTELY unavoidable.
At that point, I restarted, and loaded up the vista install disc again, but at that point it didn't detect windows as being installed on the hard drive anymore.
So, long story short, I'm wondering if maybe the hard drive has died (its over 5 years old, probably closer to 10), or what exactly the issue is? Does this seem familiar to anyone? If worst comes to worst, can I buy a new HDD, install windows, then just plug in the old drive to copy/paste the files off of?
Any recommendations or light shed on this issue would be greatly appreciated!
Last night while gaming, my computer froze. I couldn't get to task manager with Ctrl+Alt+Delete, and ended up having to do a hard reset.
Then the computer wouldn't load windows. It gave an error stating ntoskernel and winload.exe were either corrupt or missing. I ran windows repair from the Vista install disc, and it replaced ntoskernel. Restart- winload.exe is still mising or corrupt. ran repair again, replaced winload. restarted, yet again. Then it told me Hal.dll was missing or corrupt. so I ran the repair utility yet again. This time it asked me during the scan if i wanted to do a system restore to an earlier point. I accidentally clicked yes, then cut the computer once I realized it. I don't want to loose any data unless ABSOLUTELY unavoidable.
At that point, I restarted, and loaded up the vista install disc again, but at that point it didn't detect windows as being installed on the hard drive anymore.
So, long story short, I'm wondering if maybe the hard drive has died (its over 5 years old, probably closer to 10), or what exactly the issue is? Does this seem familiar to anyone? If worst comes to worst, can I buy a new HDD, install windows, then just plug in the old drive to copy/paste the files off of?
Any recommendations or light shed on this issue would be greatly appreciated!