windows won't load, bad hard drive?

ouroboros2000

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Aug 14, 2011
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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!
 

ouroboros2000

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Aug 14, 2011
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Unfortunately not, I only have 1 desktop, and live alone. It would be so inconvenient as to be not worth it to try and find a friend with a desktop I can take it to, given the work schedule I'm on.
 

Andreamorim112

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Get a pen drive and install os in there.
Boot from the usb drive.
Plug the hdd and see what you can recover.
Recover all you can, format it and install os on it again. This is if the hdd is not damaged and it was just a problem with the OS.
If he doesnt show up seal it on a bad, make aure its well sealed put it in the freezer for about 2-3 hours, take it out of the bad and plug fast in the pc and see what you can recover. Yes thia freezing technique works in some cases.
 

ouroboros2000

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So how would I go about installing the OS on a thumb drive? just plug it in and boot from the install disc? How large a thumb drive do I need to get ahold of, I think atm I only have a 2 gig one.

If I do end up buying a new HDD, would it be as simple as installing the OS on the new drive and then plugging the old one into another bay to recover data?
 

ouroboros2000

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Yea I know how to adjust the boot priority, had to do it last night get the vista disc to work right.

I'll have to stop and get a new USB drive. I'll try it when I get home from work.

In the meanwhile, any other ideas or information would be greatly appreciated as well!
 

ouroboros2000

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I ended up having to buy a new hard drive since I don't have anywhere to download the necessary files to burn to usb, or a usb drive.

However, now I have a new problem. When trying to install vista on the new computer, I get an error saying "windows setup could not configure windows to run on this computer's hardware".

The only thing that's changed is the new hd. It didn't come with any drivers in the box. Do I need to download something in order to get it to function properly? Is there something else I need to do to fix it?