Win XP Installtion Problems

[Cliffy B]

Hey guys, I'm trying to do a fresh install of XP after formating the HD and I'm running into a brick wall. My system was running just fine until it started getting very slow and throwing all sort of errors. Ran through the evet logs and traced it back to a bad Windows Update that didn't install properly. The system became so unstable that I had to use Ubuntu to get past the endless, Windows XP screen, BSOD, reboot, repeat cycle.

I formated the hard drive via Ubuntu and then rebooted with the Windows XP disc in (full version of Home) and the setup began. After it loaded I selected install and it came back and said it couldn't detect my hard drive!!! I ran the check disc utility in BIOS and it came back and said "#1 07 Fail" I honestly can not believe that my hard drive died. Its a WD 120 GB Scorpio Blue and is maybe one year old.

I can't access a single thing unless I load Ubuntu from the CD.

System is an HP DV9000 Pavillion laptop. HP support is BEYOND useless...

Any and all help is appreciated.

-Mike

PS. I downloaded the WD Data Lifeguard Tools for my hard drive and selected the version for DOS (CD) and burned it succesfully to a disc. Upon booting with said disc it comes up and says it can not located the license agreement.txt file. I have verified that the the txt file IS on the disc and I can oen it and read everything. WTF?!

I'm ready to take the laptop to a shooting range and use it for target practice

 

[cl-scott]

Sudden slowdowns and BSODs can be consistent with a failing HDD, and the age of the drive really is kind of a poor indicator to go by. Some drives are DOA, some will fail early, most will fail within a couple years of one another, and then there will be a few that will just keep going seemingly forever.

So the best thing to do would probably be to try a new HDD. It's the cheapest, quickest, and least invasive option. If Windows installs without issue, you've confirmed a bad HDD, if not, then you've got something more serious going on.

 

[Cliffy B]

Here's the short history of my laptop. Got and after about a year it overheated and was sent back to HP for a mobo/video replacement. After that everyhting was golden until the hard drive croaked. Got a new WD hard drive. Everything great again until a controller chip crapped out on the mobo. Replaced and everything was fine. That covers everything up until a month ago (I've had it since 2005...).

No signs of any issues for some time, shut it down for the night and when I booted it the next day I got a "config/sys" error. I turned it off and completely unplugged the power for a few minutes and then turned it back on and it booted normally. I ran a quick back up just in case and after a few more days of the config/sys error I re-installed XP by using the repair option. After that all is well again UNTIL Windows Update pops up earlier this week. I download and install all of the critical updates and reboot. Upon the reboot everything is SLOOOOOW and I start getting all sorts of errors (InPageFile, Driver IRQL,etc...). The machine would hang up randomly for upwards of ten mintues and then sudenly play catch up and work again. Everything was pointing to some sort of driver/system file corruption linked to a bad Windows Update. Like I said the error logs showed a bad update as far back as March of this year that was slowly messing things up.

BEFORE I re-installed Windows I ran Check Disk and my hard drive passed with flying colors! I can't believe that between now and then it suddenly went bad and only started showing signs AFTER I ran a Windows Update...

I want to use the WD DLG Tools to check the hard drive and be sure and if its good, write zeroes and start over but I can't!!! The CD won't run properly and I can't run them from with in Ubuntu. Short of just burning another CD and trying again is there a darn thing I can do?

Before the "no hard drive found error" I was able to use the Windows CD to boot and chose the clean install option with the format prior to installation option selected. It began to format the drive but was turned off while doing so by accident thus beginning the "no HDD found" error. I can't help but think that all my new issues are stemming from the fact that the formating operation was interupted and now writing zeroes is the only option. Ubuntu is telling me that I have 272 bad sectors on a 120GB HDD. Is the HDD now phsyically toast because the formating was interupted or can I salvage it?


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