Hi,

I have an old pentium II PC which i would like to start using again. The problem is one. I had switched off this computer without using the shut down procedure, and it seems that i have damaged the hard drive. The PC won't boot and sometimes it displays the message to insert system boot disk. Is the problem really from the hard drive and if so, do i have to change the hard drive ?

Thanks,
Andrew

Hello majorpainmt, welcome to PCHF.

The intermittent "insert system boot disk" could be an early sign of HDD failure, however this error can occur with a faulty IDE lead, or HDD controller onboard the motherboard. It's not an easy one to diagnose without trial and error. Most likely HDD if the problem is intermittent, and from what your describing - shutting the PC off whilst the disk is active.

Thanks for your reply madmonkey.

Yes, it seems to be so. I tried to boot up with the Win 98 floppy disk, then with the Win XP cd, but it said that there is not enough space to install Win XP. Probably i will buy a new HDD and replace it with the old one.

Is it complicated to install a new hard drive ?

Andrew

XP should *just about* run on that PC, provided you have 64mb of RAM or more, but it will be absolutely dog slow!!

It's pritty easy to install a new HDD. Make sure the new HDD is IDE as apposed to SATA. This site should help you: Install Hard Drive - A guide to installing a hard drive (IDE)

Hi.

Thats why i prefer re-installing Win 98 on that PC. Win 98 used to work ok with the RAM it has. Anyway, i am not planning to use the old computer as a workstation, but just as a store for my music and video files so that i would free some of my laptop's memory. So if I install a larger hard drive, let's say 160GB, will that mean that i have to upgrade the RAM aswell ?

Thanks

Na, you don't need to upgrade your RAM for that, but I seriously doubt your motherboard would support a disk that size, and even if it did, you would need to partition it into multiple drives due to the file system that 98 uses (FAT32).

EDIT: Marked as answered.