I tried using the cd of a full home version of windows to repair itself with no joy. Thinking I had picked up a virus (perhaps???) I bought a cheap 80gb HDD to try and reinstall windows with the aim of scanning the old HDD. It took a couple of attempts to successfully copy the files onto the new drive but I got windows up and running again. When I reconnected the old HDD as a slave and rebooted, the computer seemed to attempt to repair both drives and I since lost the working version of XP.

Thinking I was simply back to square one, I tried to reinstall xp on the 80gb drive but now it simply won't succeed in copying the files, stopping at different points on the install, giving me the choice of skipping files or trying again. Neither seems to work.

I have managed to order a replacement cd from MS in the hope that the cd is damaged and not the hardware but while I wait for the post to arrive I wondered whether any expert could enlighten me as to what may have happened to windows or do I have a mechanical problem?

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_{Still Learning and Trying to Keep It Simple in Sharing knowledge
[A] rig..ASUS-EN8500GT SATA-320+80GB G31MX-S2 2.6GHz E2160 2G
[B] rig..384M_XFX8800GS SATA-320+500GB G31MX-S2 2.9GHz E4600 2G
32-bit Mint4, Mint6rc1, WinXP & Vista Home Premium.}

The aim was simply to reinstate or repair windows on the original HDD with at the very least the hope of salvaging some of the data from the disk such as photos, letters and so on. When I had no joy recovering windows I thought maybe the drive was broken or riddled with some virus so I bought a cheap IDE drive in an attempt to get the pc up and running and scan the old drive with a virus checker. I got windows up but didn't manage to scan the disk before it all folded again. I'm wondering from your post whether it is a combination of things - I live in the south of france and last week it was 38c in the shade so perhaps heat has taken it's toll?

If I can't bring my old pc to life, is it possible to attach my original HDD to some kind of cradle to then scan with my wife's more recent computer or if there is something nasty lurking on the drive would that just put her computer at risk of infection?

The only thing is, if there is a virus on there and I have no idea if there is or not, is there any risk in plugging it into another computer or is it just a case of performing a virus scan on the drive?

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_{Still Learning and Trying to Keep It Simple in Sharing knowledge
[A] rig..ASUS-EN8500GT SATA-320+80GB G31MX-S2 2.6GHz E2160 2G
[B] rig..384M_XFX8800GS SATA-320+500GB G31MX-S2 2.9GHz E4600 2G
32-bit Mint4, Mint6rc1, WinXP & Vista Home Premium.}

Then you can use any tools to check the old drive for hardware errors without further risk to you data

Cheers Chris



Rig 1 Aerocool M40 Corsair HX520,4CORE1333FULLHD E4500,2GB Corsair DDR2,2 X 80 sata (RAID 0)1 200gb , xfx 7900gs xxx

Rig 2 Winfast 6100k8ma,AMD 64 X2 4200 S939 @2.42Ghz 1GB pc3200 (2x512mb) 500gb SATA

re-install onto the new drive completely.  run few checks of hardware like memtest, orthos to stress cpu etc etc.  hopefully this shows no hardware problem.

next either use linux live cd such as ubuntu and try to retrieve data. OR connect old drive making sure to connect properly(must admit i haven't had use of ide drives as started late with 'puters and always use sata but sure it's easy to find out what jumpers/cables etc need to be set to) and should then show as 2nd drive which you can scan.

i would proberly say that it sounds like a physical fault with the drive not a virus but if it is a virus, i guess it is likely it could get over to the new OS installation but again at least the new installation is currently just for this issue and so the situation wouldn't be any worse even if it did.

e6600 o/c to 3.0ghz, samsung F1 750GB HDD, BFG 7300gt oc, p5b deluxe wi-fi,corsair 620w psu,2-2gb ocz reaper 6400 in dual channel,scythe infinity, antec 900 case.