Ill jump right into my problem.

I have a 250GB Samsung IDE Hard Drive 7200 RPM (Not sure of model tbh)

Last night i was in the middle of booting up and on the windows loading screen when my power went out. When the power comes back on i boot up my machine and im brought to the boot window where it allows me to choose Safe Mode, Safe mode with Networking, Last known configuration and Boot windows normally.

When i choose Normal boot or Last known configuration it sits there almost likes its locked up for a good 30-45 seconds. Then i get the white windows bar at the bottom of my screen which starts to load INCREDIBLY slow. It gets to about 1/4 of the way across the screen and the screen goes black and the PC reboots itself.

If i choose any of the safe mode options it does the same, it sits there for 30-45 seconds like it's locked up then proceeds to load the list of files down the screen. Usually this would take 3-4 seconds, it now takes 1-2 minutes and when its about to load the last file it reboots the PC.

The only spare HD i have laying around is an 8GB Fujitsu IDE drive thats like 4 yrs old but im able to boot up and get functionality out of my PC. I'm inclined to think that this means my other Hard Drive is completely gone? But im hesitant to give up so soon. I was wondering if anyone has any other ideas that i could try to see if could get it working again. I had a peek in my BIOS and saw that it's recognizing that a 250gb hard drive is connected but i still cannot get past the "Choose how you want to boot" screen. I'm unable to format the drive also. Once i load the windows disk and get the agreement page where im informed to push F8 if i agree to the terms and services it wont let me. But im able to Escape and quit or scroll down to view the rest of the text. Does this indicate my Hard Drive has died and it cant read it?

Hello and welcome to PC Help Forum.

Your HDD may of got damage due to power out.

Leave the 8 gig as main and try the 250 as a slave see if you can acsess the files from there?If you can I would back up the data on the 250 HDD to disk.

Set little jumper to slave on the 250 HDD.

Buying a surge protected electrical extension cable would minimise the damage if you have another power out.

It wouldn't detect the samsung drive and only ever detected the Fujitsu and by default made it the Master.

Either that or i did it wrong but I've no other ideas.

I'm just going to assume that the Samsung Drive is done for. If this 8GB drive works fine then it's obviously an issue with the samsung. I don't mind paying 40$ to get a new 250GB new one.

Tho I've never installed a new HD before i assume that i connect it then boot up with my Windows disk in and install windows correct? Anything i should be wary off or do?

It is a IDE hdd they are easy to fit.just 4 screws or a few clips,plugin power and IDE cable.Reboot press either Del/F1/F2 wich ever your screen prompts for entering setup.In BIOS go to boot tab.

Set first boot device to CD/DVD rom then follow this link.

How to partition and format a hard disk in Windows XP

Any problems please come and ask we are here to help.

Someone mentioned that i could try a scandisk check or something along those lines. I was wondering if anyone had any guides to this process

Ty.