Compaq Computer Price

Hard drive failure. What I did

Yesterday I had to change my hard drive and had a few issues that I was able to fix.

The problems started in the morning when my wife called me and told me that the computer would not boot. We have been having trouble with our hard drive for a while now and I was able to fix each time by just reseting the PC. This time though the computer was not seeing the hard drive. Using tools and knowledge that I had I had to do the following:

Install new hard drive

First of all I had to install the new hard drive. I was able to do this by disconnecting my CDR and leaving myDVD drive, two old hard drives in the machine, plus a new 80 gig drive with a 16 meg cache. I was unsuccessful at loading Windows though as I kept getting an error as the Windows setup was starting, after loading the drivers I would get an error that it could not load the setup. I switched to my CDR from the DVD drive and had no problems.

Setup Windows

I successfully did a quick format of the new drive (thanks for that new feature Windows XP) and successfully loaded Windows XP. This is pretty basic as I use a CD that not only has Windows XP on it but also has Service Pack 2 for XP slipstreamed onto it.

Rebuild hard drive partition table

After I booted to Windows I saw that my old drive was not showing up as a drive or a partition. If I right clicked on the partition in Disk Management it knew that the drive existed but could no longer find a partition on it. Windows Disk Management said that the drive was healthy, My first attempt was to create a partition but not to format the partition as I did not want to lose the data for good. I fought with this for a couple of hours as I did not back up lately and the wife would kill me if I lost all of her data. In the end I was able to use Test Disk from the Filesystem tools of the Dos Ultimate Boot Disk. It ends up that the partition table had a start but not an end and the program was able to fix this….whew I would have been in trouble….

Migrate Windows and Office data

After I had the old drive back I went into the BIOS and chose to boot from that drive. I was able to boot to the old Windows XP installation easily enough and did not want to keep any of the data there but thought it would be a good idea to transfer my Windows settings using the file and settings transfer wizard in Windows. I saved the settings using the wizard and chose this as the old computer and in the destination I chose a folder I created on the new hard drive called “transfer files”. I then decided to transfer only my settings as I knew that I was going to have to reload my software and would be manually copying over the file structure from the old drive to the new drive.

I also moved all of my settings for MS Office using the Save my Settings Wizard from the MS Office 2003 tools section. I was able to copy the settings, which come across as an OPS file to the same place as my Windows Transfer Files and Settings.

After I had moved the settings and files over I rebooted and went back into the BIOS and changed my first boot to the new hard drive and it’s windows XP installation. I was very happy to see that after running the wizrds for transfering the settings and after reloading MS Office 2003 I was able to move over my mail folder and saw all of my email, contacts, and best of all my email addresses (Still had to fill in the passwords for email but that’s OK). After a relogon I also had all of my desktop settings back includig the background picture of my daughter and the animated Pingu cursors.

Copy data from bad drive

Next I just did a blanket move of all of the files from the old hard drive to new into a new folder that I created in the root of the drive. I did this simply to save time as I am not sure about the stability of the old hard drive and fear that I will lose it again.

Reload software

I have started reloading software but as usual I am going to be slow about the move this time. I will install some of my favorite freewares and will install Streets and Trips, Adobe Acrobat, Macromedia Dreamweaver and Adobe Photoshop Elements and that’s it.

I have roughly followed about half of my Reloading Windows tutorial but since I have both drives functioning at the moment I have tried to cut some corners and make this work well as well as getting my wife up and running quickly for her work stuff this morning.

Compaq Computer Price stuff to buy

Pal Pc Tracker - Stops Computer Theft!
Computer software that allows you to find your Pc anywhere in the world if it's ever lost or stolen!

How To Make Money Working From Home!
A practical, Step-By-Step guide to start making money on the Internet using your computer!

Cleaning Computers - Secrets Exposed!
How To Start Your Own Profitable Computer Cleaning Business - Step By Step Business Kit!

Compaq Computer Price Recent Stories from around the internet

compaq computer price

Looking for signs that netbooks are catching on? And even morphing into notebooks? Here's a few. Netbooks were the big end-user gadget on display at the Windows Hardware Engineering Conference conference that ended Friday. And all the Netbooks at a ...

Nanotech - The Circuits Blog - CNET News

HP Compaq 6530b all-purpose laptop Nvidia to ship Tegra chip by mid-2009, CEO says AMD lays off 500 staff as financial troubles continue Intel set to launch Nehalem November 17 MacBook Pro is built to last Asus N10Jc Mini-notebook Atom could ...

Wellness comes home with new Intel device - Reseller

Greg Moore, owner of Extreme Systems in Harker Heights and Copperas Cove, has been on a mission for four years to collect as many old dead computer parts as he can to recycle. He redoubled his efforts this year when the state of Texas mandated that ...

Herald/SARAH MOORE KUSCHELL - Killeen Daily Herald

Bathing Ape, or BAPE for short, is a Japanese street wear clothing company owned by music producer Nigo that caters to young, fashion saavy urban youth that apparently have way too much money to burn. A couple months, the company collaborated with ...

Justin Yu - CNET News

It's not sitting on a desktop. This printer – a digital Inkjet Web Press designed for newspapers, book publishers and commercial print shops – is bigger than a city bus. Its price tag is $2.5 million. “Soon to be available at Best Buy and ...

Hewlett-Packard's Inkjet Web Press, which was developed in San Diego ... - San Diego Union-Tribune

When you find yourself having to keep your laptop computer plugged into its AC adapter most of the time, chances are your original battery is dead and it's time to start looking for a replacement. The first thing that comes to most people's minds is ...

Are Replacement Laptop Batteries as Good as the Originals? - Toms Hardware

As markets change, user needs evolve, and the result is a segmented demand. This is mainly because the PC is becoming a commodity today, and therefore, vendors such as Acer have also moved with the times by making acquisitions to tap market ...

Acer growth depends on channel partners - Business24-7

If all the restaurants in a food court make excellent fish soup, how can one restaurant differentiate its soup from the crowd? Can they win the competition by lowering their price? In most cases, it is not feasible, as restaurants have to earn some ...

HP says bye to vapid designs - The Jakarta Post

Here's a first list of the sessions and speakers that we have lined up this year. We will be adding to this list and making updates in the next few weeks, so check back often. This session provides a complete end-to-end overview of the software ...

Conference Sessions - MSDN Online Deutschland

Strong demand for the new class of affordable computer known as the netbook helped to prop up the computer industry’s performance in the third quarter, which can be described as soft in most places. Worldwide PC shipments reached 80.6 million in ...