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dhill

Originally Posted by ih8bills

That's why every PC "guru" recommends a regular backup of all your personal files.
Software can be replaced/reinstalled... hardware can be replaced.
Moments of your life cannot.
If a harddrive suffers catastrophic failure-- you would be looking at a Data-Recovery Service ...which can be very expensive indeed...
If the drive won't spin-up, they have to disassemble it, remove the platters ... and use lab-level equipment to save the data.
Total failure does happen-- most just live with it-- because the cost is prohibitive

Oh trust me I've been telling him to back up his stuff for a long time, never turns his computer off and just overall takes pretty bad care of it. I've got an external hard drive for my PC that has everything I'd need on it.

dhill

Originally Posted by Gandalf

If I can put my two cents worth in here...

Is it your hard drive that is messed up or Windows that is messed up?

If it is your hard drive, then in the long run reinstalling Windows isn't your best fix. For a bad hard drive, replacement is the only real fix. (Been there, done that.)

If it is Windows that is messed up, then what caused the mess up? Maybe we can fix the mess up.

We do magic.

Looks to me like windows is messed up, but I'm not all that sure. Here's one of the error messages, this should help:

File/minint/system32/ntkrnlmp.exe could not be loaded, error code 4128

Gandalf

First try this,

Double-click My Computer, and then right-click the hard disk that you want to check

Click Properties, and then click Tools

Under Error-checking, click Check Now. A dialog box that shows the Check disk options is displayed

Select the Scan for and attempt recovery of bad sectors check box, and then click Start

Reboot when prompted.

After that give this a try,

Place the XP Windows Install CD in the CD drive.
Go to the Accessories...Command Prompt
enter: sfc /scannow
There is a space between "c" and "/".
This could take from minutes to hours to run.

ih8bills

Originally Posted by dhill

Oh trust me I've been telling him to back up his stuff for a long time, never turns his computer off and just overall takes pretty bad care of it. I've got an external hard drive for my PC that has everything I'd need on it.

I know the story well...I harp on my friends all the time.
"This is a machine--
machines break
protect your data".... They never listen.

dhill

Originally Posted by Gandalf

First try this,

Double-click My Computer, and then right-click the hard disk that you want to check

Click Properties, and then click Tools

Under Error-checking, click Check Now. A dialog box that shows the Check disk options is displayed

Select the Scan for and attempt recovery of bad sectors check box, and then click Start

Reboot when prompted.

After that give this a try,

Place the XP Windows Install CD in the CD drive.
Go to the Accessories...Command Prompt
enter: sfc /scannow
There is a space between "c" and "/".
This could take from minutes to hours to run.

I actually can't get into windows so..yeah.

dhill

Originally Posted by ih8bills

I know the story well...I harp on my friends all the time.
"This is a machine--
machines break
protect your data".... They never listen.

hah, yup. My external has been huge for me, I would've lost a lot without this thing.

DIIRE

What commands did you try from Recovery Console?

What happens when you try to boot normally? Error messages, reboot loop, etc

Also just as a side note - a backup external hdd can fail just as easily as a normal internal hdd, in fact I've seen them fail more often than internal hard drives as they're often transported around which makes them more succeptible to being dropped, etc. I always keep 3 backups of personal things like photo's etc that i'd be devastated to lose. 2 hdd's (on separate pc's) and 1 online storage. The chances of 2 hdd's plus online storage all failing at once is pretty much zero.

If you want to know more about online storage, ih8bills can give you some excellent info and links.