Re:Hang in there and think positive thoughts
Maybe give the computer a soothing massage… 
Re:I might have it fixed, or at least patched up. I just found the Western Digital (my SATA HDD) disk utility that I ran on my drive and it said it repaired the errors. No I have started my computer and it is at the Windows Installation screen where it installs drivers and stuff, I presume because I chose to repair the installation before. I will see if I can anywhere. I wish I had found that utility earlier, now I have to set up Windows XP and install drivers again
, looks like I could be busy for another 3 or 4 hours.
Thanks for your help, I will keep it in mind if I can't get my computer running, and for the future.
Aston
Re:ooops, stray post!
Re:WinXP Pro is good news, you can simply go to Control Panel > somewhere > Folder Options and disable the Simple File Sharing with a checkbox so you can see the Security and Ownership stuff if it comes down to it. With WinXP Home, I heard you must boot in Safe Mode to get at it
Sorry to hear of all the troubles… computers can certainly be a roller-coaster ride at times :Q :Q :Q 
and so on. 
Been there, done that!
Re:Thanks!
I will see if I can get a SATA card, could be a better option.
All my computers have Windows XP Pro.
I wish my computers would just work, I am always having to fix them and they always having complicated and difficult problems . Also this isn't the first time a near new HDD has failed on me .
Aston
Re:In this situation, it's nice to try to rescue the files some way before committing to a course of action. It's too bad you don't have another SATA-ready computer.
You might think about buying a cheap non-RAID PCI SATA card, if you can find one for a lot less than a new hard drive. Then you could put the drive into another computer, hosted by the PCI SATA card, take Ownership () of the files from your old profile (if they're readable), copy them to the other computer's hard drive for safekeeping, and then put the hard drive back in its own computer and format/install.
Good luck Oh, and what operating system do your healthy computers have? XP Pro, XP Home, 2000Pro…?
Re:Thanks for replying,
I tried the repair following your instructions but at what I think was the last step (after copying across files and "Setting Up XP") it gave me a message that said something like "cannot setup XP on drive C:\, C:\ cannot be found on specified device, possible disk error". I guess something has happened to my HDD, I ran chkdsk and it said the disk was ok but then I ran it again with the /p and /r options ("chkdsk /p" & "chkdsk /r") and it said that there was an unrecoverable error. Any ideas what this could be, is there another tool to fix errors like this? The HDD is only about 3 months old.
I think I will buy a new HDD today (The cheapest I can find in my area is an 80GB for AUD$100 ) and install Windows XP on it and then boot from it and try to access the SATA drive and recover my data. Very anoying, time consuming and expensive, so if you have another idea I would like to hear it!
Thanks,
Aston
Re:First of all, it's normal for your IDE drive with WinXP to not boot if you simply throw it into a different computer (unless the motherboards are pretty similar). That's just The Way Things Are.
Try this routine:
1) Start Windows Setup from the CD. If your motherboard uses a driver floppy for the SATA drivers, also press the F6 key when prompted.
2) It gets going and asks if you want to Repair. This first time, do not say "Repair". Act as if you're going to do a fresh installation.
3) Windows Setup will proceed a little further, ask you to accept the license terms, possibly ask for your SATA drivers on floppy diskette, and then ask where you want to install to. Point it at the C: partition.
4) Windows Setup will notice that there's a directory C:\WINDOWS that already contains a Windows installation, and ask if you want that one repaired. Now say "Repair."
5) Make sure your network cable is unplugged. When you're done, you'll have a "raw" WinXP installation. Any patches you had installed will be gone. So if it's at Service Pack 1a level, you're going to be vulnerable to worm attacks. Don't plug into broadband until you've either enabled the WinXP Firewall (see Help if needed) or installed ZoneAlarm or another firewall, or Service Pack 2 which enables Windows Firewall and plugs the vulnerabilities too. If you have a hardware firewall then you are ok, however (unless there's a worm-infected computer on your side of it).
6) Get all your security patches at Windows Update.
This routine should adopt your programs and data. Good luck, hope that helps
0 Comments.