Educational Computer Game

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.

Educational Computer Game 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!

Educational Computer Game Recent Stories from around the internet

educational computer game

The Webster Central School District has received a nearly $300,000 grant to help fight the growing problem of childhood obesity. The Greater Rochester Area Health Foundation is providing the grant that will be used at Schlegel Road Elementary School ...

Grant will help Webster schools in fight against obesity - MPNow

Children love video games. Teachers and parents both attest to the fact that the biggest challenge in the battle of homework is the video game. Students would rather play their favorite game than do their homework. Forward-thinking game designers are ...

Even video games can be educational - Las Vegas Sun

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 ...

Read all '"nintendo ds"' posts in Crave - CNET News

BOULDER, Colo. - (Business Wire) AgentSheets, Inc., an innovative Boulder-based technology company, has been recognized by the University of Colorado (CU) and the National Science Foundation (NSF) as uniquely positioned to help resolve the crisis in ...

ITEST Research Grant to Bring AgentSheets' Scalable Game Design to ... - Earthtimes

COLORADO SPRINGS, Colo., Oct. 28 /PRNewswire/ -- Think Services' HDI(R) ( http://www.thinkhdi.com ), the world's largest technical service and support membership association and the industry's premier training and certification body, announced 2009 ...

Think Services' HDI 2009 Annual Conference & Expo Comes to Las Vegas - PR Newswire

It is time to take a break from Linux commands and have some fun playing computer games. Luckily, the open source software community offers many gaming and educational choices among the other applications. Whether you want to exercise your own mind ...

Linux Games: Fun with Tux - Datamation

EMERYVILLE, Calif., Oct. 28 /PRNewswire/ -- EduCel, LLC, a pioneer and a leader in technology that accelerates learning and supports performance at the time of need, today announced the launch of its new mobile portal, educell.com -- The Ace in Your ...

Mobile Portal educell.com Launches with Thousands of How-to Guides - PR Newswire

Jean Tyrrell wanted to find activities that would allow students in the autism program at Patterson Mill Middle/High School to be more physically active during the school day. After researching some ideas, Tyrrell said she purchased a Nintendo Wii ...

Real workout, virtual world - Baltimore Sun

When historian Anne Maderasz looks at Pittsburgh, she sees the tale of people who have responded to a history of challenges. Whether as the confluence that was a gateway to a continent, the steel-making capital of the world, or the site of stunning ...

'Innovation' looks at area's will-do heritage - Pittsburgh Tribune Review

Sunday, November 2, 2008 The video showed how, in a few easy steps, the Nintendo Wii remote controller - or "Wiimote" - could transform a normal video screen into a virtual reality display, with graphics that seemed to pop through the screen and into ...