Just spent tha afternoon installing programs on my old pc, only for the hard drive to die on me Have been offered a 20gb hd for £15 is this the going rate for them? And is it just a case of sticking the new drive in and away you go? or do I have to format it and that malarky

cheers kot

 

Chepeast you can get a new drive for is around £25-30 for a 40gb. 80gb not much more.

You'd need to install windows on your new drive if it's your main (boot) drive. If not, just format it in windows and away you go.

 

That is expensive.
£30 gets you an 80gb one.
£60 gets you 250gb.

 

What do I change in bios to get my new hd to become the boot device?

 

Got the 20 gig for a tener in the end .

Keep getting this coming up though

A problem has been dected and windows has been shut down to prevent damage to your computer. If this is your fisrt time you've seen this stop error screen, restart your computer. If this screen appears again, floolow these steps:
Check for viruses on your computer. Remove any newly installed hard drives or hard drive controllers. Check your hard drive to make sure it is properly configured and terminated.
Run CHKDSK /F to check for hard drive corruption, and then restart your computer.


Where do I Run CHKDSK /F from

 

king,

I guess you have an ATA drive ? Check that the jumpers are set in the right position. If its the only drive on the cable, set it to Master and make sure its at the end of the cable.

Jules

 

That doesn't sound like a hard drive problem (at least, not usually) - overheating sounds more likely. But either way, you open a DOS window to run the CHKDSK command.


M

 

Noticed the jumper was set to cable select setting,so set it to master but still comes up with the same message.


kot

 

How can I open a dos window on start up? cheers kot

 

if your running 98 press f8 on booting, it will take you into the boot menu... select boot with command promt only.....when it hits the command prompt run chkdisk..not sure on xp tho


20 gig hd is v small btw... thata the size of my windowa partitiopn on one of my drives


Mart

 

Its only for my gfs dad, he only uses excel and a few other programs so ill doubt he will use half that even. My hd is 200gig and I only have 30 gig free on that will give that a go though

 

Did you install windows yourself on new drive? Or did it have a windows version already on?

 

Was already on there.

 

Thats probably why it's crashing on startup then. If it's taken out of a different system, with a different chipset then Windows won't have the correct drivers for your system to boot.

Sometimes you can get away with it if the systems are similar.

You need to reinstall, or perhaps repair Windows.

 

I have windows xp on disc.is it just a case of whacking the disc in to re install?
cheers kot

 

Yes, boot from Windows CD.

You might just be able to to a 'repair' - just follow options on screen.

If there is not data on the Drive you need, maybe just as well to do a clean install

 

Note: NOT the option "Do you want to open a repair console?" bit. which occurs soon after booting with the CD. Tell it you want to install XP, and on to the C:\ drive. Windows will then tell you it has found an existing installation and do you want to repair it? Yes you do. Yes, you will need a serial number - I'm not sure if it has to be the same number that was originally used. But you'll soon find out.


M

 

All sorted cheers