Computer Training Atlanta

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 Training Atlanta 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 Training Atlanta Recent Stories from around the internet

computer training atlanta

2008 Global Productivity Report results show significant opportunities for improvement across manufacturing sector ATLANTA - Proudfoot Consulting, a global operational management consulting firm, has released the results of its 2008 Global ...

Manufacturing Companies Leave 27% of Unrealized Productivity On the ... - dBusinessNews.com

ATLANTA, Oct. 29 /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ -- Logility, Inc. (NASDAQ: LGTY) , a leading supplier of collaborative solutions to optimize the supply chain, announced today that it has been included in Software Magazine's 26th annual Software 500 ranking ...

Logility Included in Software Magazine's Annual Ranking of the World's ... - PR Newswire

NewswireToday - /newswire/ - St Albans, Herts, United Kingdom, 11/03/2008 - Monique Head - an American from Atlanta, Georgia, who is now living in Antibes in the South of France – has become the 1.000th person to join the eLearning Network (eLN ...

The eLearning Network Signs Up its 1.000th Member this Year - Newswiretoday.com

WALLED LAKE, Mich., Oct. 28 /PRNewswire/ -- Paramount Technologies, the leading provider of middle-market Employee Workforce Automation solutions, today announced the introduction and immediate availability of a platform-independent version of their ...

Paramount Technologies Unveils Platform-Independent SMB eProcurement ... - PR Newswire

ATLANTA - Hundreds of people in one suburban Atlanta county lined up under sunny skies Saturday to cast a ballot although for most Georgians advance voting ended Friday. Coweta County, located about 35 miles southwest of Atlanta, received federal ...

Coweta County residents get extra day of voting - Access North GA

Manufacturing Companies Leave 27% of Unrealized Productivity On the Table, According to Proudfoot 2008 Global Productivity Report results show significant opportunities for improvement ... Basics, Fine Points of Intellectual Property Among Topics in ...

Latest News - dBusinessNews.com

DailyTech reported in late October that Circuit City was on the brink of closing 150 stores and slashing more jobs . Circuit City's stock price has dropped over 90% since the start of the year and this past Thursday, the company was warned that it ...

Circuit City to close 20% of its stores by year's end. - DailyTech

Rangers' rising star Alexei Cherepanov died while playing for Russian team on Oct. 13. A top Russian military official said Friday that Alexei Cherepanov, the Rangers prospect who died last month during a game in Russia, was playing for his ...

Official says Rangers prospect Alexei Cherepanov was playing illegally - New York Daily News

Zultys, Inc., a Silicon Valley company known for its open standards IP communications and telephony products, today recognized an innovative solution devised by Alliant DataTel, Inc. for a four office medical practice in metro Atlanta, Georgia. Pain ...

Pain Solutions Treatment Centers chooses Premise-Based IP Phone System ... - Transworld News

One morning last week when my clock/radio came on with the news, the first thing I heard was that several stations in Indianapolis had lowered their gas prices to under $2 per gallon. I got up, ate breakfast, got on my computer and Googled a well ...