Computer Repair Zone San Antonio

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.

Computer Repair Zone San Antonio 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!

Computer Repair Zone San Antonio Recent Stories from around the internet

computer repair zone san antonio

Kobe Bryant here, Carmelo Anthony there, maybe LeBron James or Dwight Howard. But it all came to an end with the United States' 118-81 victory over Argentina in the gold-medal game of the FIBA Americas tournament on Sunday. Now the U.S. players will ...

Posts for September, 2007 - Milwaukee Journal Sentinel

NEW DAWG: I’ll take the Dolphins right now. They have a better head coach in Tony Sparano, and his club is focused on football. I don’t know if the Cowboys are about football anymore, and now we see Wade Phillips has underachieved as the head ...

It’s a 50-50 split over whether the Dallas Cowboys or Miami Dolphins ... - Fort Worth Star-Telegram

North Central BTA (NCBTA), based in Minneapolis, has named Denise Truso its president for a two-tear term (2007-2009). Truso, who is director of business development at Carlson Wagonlit Travel, says her primary goal as president is to increase ...

INDUSTRY NEWS & PEOPLE November 2007 - Business Travel Executive

Still no charges in slaying of Jennifer Hudson's family Prosecutors seek gag order in Casey Anthony case Conviction in Salvador Velasquez homicide Midtown Miscreant v. Bannister Mall Life without parole in Derek Orchard homicide 12 years for ...

Email Crime Scene KC - Kansas City Star Blogs

Each Tuesday, the Star-Telegram's Ray Buck and NBC 5's Newy Scruggs go at it in a point-counterpoint on sporting issues. | E-mail Ray Buck at rbuck@star-telegram.com. | Newy can be reached at his Web site, www.newdawg.com. Retired NFL QB Jeff George ...

Buck & New Dawg: Uh-oh, Jeff George claims he can help the Dallas ... - Fort Worth Star-Telegram

Buck & New Dawg: Mike Singletary puts the tough back in tough-love ... - Fort Worth Star-Telegram

The Trackmasters have a good rep in the music industry. They tried to apply what they have done to Lil Kim’s rap career to no avail. I’m not sure where this statement came from, but they are speaking quickly. They were included in a recent ...

Hip-Hop Rumors: The Game's Sister Shot! Rihanna & Kanye Kissing? - allhiphop.com

Funny thing, I am not a Westerner nor have I ever been at any point in my life. Fact of the matter I have never been any further west then Richmond Indianapolis. If you would consider that west at all. I have spent most of my sports existence ...

The Daily Dose - Sporting News

Top: Young MikeK playing with Evel Knievel action figure; bottom: MikeK receives inspiration from his childhood friends before leaving for a Coeur d'Alene City Council meeting. I had a classic Evel Knievel motorcycle riding action figure when I was a ...

Councilman MikeK Recalls Knievel Action Figure - Spokane Spokesman-Review

There is something slightly sinister about John McCain's latest method of campaigning. It is well worth listening to the "robo-calls" here . The messages are nothing like as aggressive as some we have heard in the past (and were used against Mr ...