sup geeks!!

anywho...got a new monitor to hook up to my old computer so that my gf can use it for gaming...she's playing spore right now and i'm gunna try and get her playing WoW ^^...anyway...

when i powered it up all the bells and whistles went off like they should...but then it got to the window's loading screen and just sat there...i ended up manuauly restarting it and attempted to load into safe mode...again, wouldn't load in...so i figure windows was corrupted, i need to reformate the drive and reinstall...no biggy...kinda figured i would have to do that anyway...

i pop the cd in, start the comp from there, start formatting the drive...once it's finished however (after like 2/3 hours mind you -.-) it says the disk was messed up/corrupted and it wasn't able to formate...wtf...couldn't it have figured that out 3 hours ago!??anyway...i delete the partition that was there and try formatting again...this time it gets past the formatting stage, but then i get a blue screen of death with a bunch of code or whatever on it (wish i wrote down the code to look up)...then said "begining to dump physical memory"

anywho...my guess is the HD is toaste...it is 6 years old after all and been sitting in a closet for almost 2 years...but i wanted to run it by you guys first...does it sound like an HD problem???i hope it is cuase that's an easy fix

also...my processer fan is pretty damn loud and i was thinking of replacing that as well...how easy is is to replace those ghetto-ass fans w/o fucking up the processor?

damaged hard drive. if you want to save a bit of cash you can try dowloading some boot tools from certain websites (ask in a PM about this if you are unclear) and try to run hard drive recovery tools to make the hard drive skip/repair damaged sectors

processor fans are ok to replace... sounds like it's an average P4 machine? if so you can just buy a fan that's the same size (diameter) and just replace and go :O

with how cheap HD's are, is it even worth it???i guess i could try it atleast...no reason not to...but are there any down sides to doing this???could it come back to haunt me later???

i don't even think it's a p4 (like i said...6 years old)...probably a p3, maybe even p2...i was just worried about like the old thermal paste and such being a pain to get off the processor and such

thanks for the input...keep it coming!

=/ it usually takes a good 2-3 hours to run the software... umm if its just minor damage (couple dozen damaged sectors) it wont hurt. But if you notice the damage recovery breaks past like a hundred sectors... toss the drive! HDD's have a lifespan, as they get used more their spin-ups, write error rates, <insert more technical jargon here> get worse.

mind you i did this with a HDD that's 8 years old now and it still runs fine even today

P3's i found to be even easier to replace the fan on.
(though i really really really doubt a p3 can run Spore)

And btw, computers are dirt cheap atm, its like 400~ for a basic dual core computer.. toss in another 100'ish and you have urself a decent computer :O

i'll try running those prog's and see what happens...the comp itself was running fine...i just stopped using it when i built my new one...so maybe there isn't that much wrong with the drive

and i don't really want to rebuild the computer...it's for my gf to do some gaming on so we're not fighting over my computer...and the fan thing has nothing to do with performance...just that it's louder then i'd like ^^

Well, what I would do, if possible, use ur old HD in your current machine as slave. Check the jumpers near the HD connectors and switch it to Slave, put it in your machine and then run the diags from there. If the HD is toasted, it will take less time to figure it out like that than with the old DOS tools. If your comp is fairly new, maybe your motherboard doesnt have an IDE plug, then you would have no choise but to DL the DOS tools and make good ol' boot disks.

GL

actually windows is smart enough to skip damaged sectors if its not too many on its own... so if you boot as slave, you will either get 1 of 2 results

1) Computer loads normally, but lags when u use the damaged slave drive. Upon running diag tools, your computer would probably crash since the tools cannot check disk surface while the drive is in use by windows

2) your computer wont load from bad hard drive


correct me if im wrong pls

idk...the idea of opening up my current, working computer, doesn't sound like a good one lol...seems like a lot less work to just make a boot disk and run it...over opening both up and doing some surgery

thx for the input though sokr ^^

Well, your kinda wrong there Your comp wont crash from using a bad slave, the worst it could do is tell you that the drive isnt formated and you have to format it again, then use the scandisk. If the drive is so bad it cant even be formated, you wont see it in your HD list in "my computer".

But yeah, if you dont know what you're doing, dont go there, unless you want to buy a new HD, then play with the bad one and see what it does when you change jumpers

O_o woah.. ok then.. cus my other computer's always just showed the drives that are damaged and when u click on them it would freeze up for like a good 5 minutes
(P3 500mhz, 1gb RAM, windows 2k)

It was probably cuz both drives were as "masters" instead of having only one, then your bios will designate the 1st HD on the IDE cable as master and the other one as slave, therefor, using the corupted winblows

:S maybe i should try it again... cus i know both drives set as slaves or standalone, the BIOS will pick whichever one is on the first IDE >< haha i never knew that about setting both as masters :O

so...i got a new HD and installed that np...got windows loaded on and all that jazz late last night...updated my vid drivers and some other things and then went to get online so i could DL sp2 and get that installed...however...i couldn't get connected...

so this is probably going to turn into a stupid question...but whatever...i'd rather just do it this way since its much easier...is there anything i need to do to get online???the port on the mobo has all the lights on...my router light has it's light on for the 2nd comp...but it didn't connect...i didn't try restarting my rounter which will prob fix it...but is there anything else i would need to do???

i do have my main computer set to a static IP...but that shouldn't matter, should it???

remember that DHCP stuff i was talking to you about? =) Default on your comp is probably to DHCP and from the sounds of it your router isn't setup for it.

just build a new computer, you can build a decent gaming computer for > $1000

i already have a decent gaming computer...it just needed a new HD...i'd rather spend $50 then $1000