hard disk won't scandisk

[kummel]

I have a gateway running win/me. It started failing, and finaly got to the point where windows won't startup. I booted with a recovery disk and tried runing scandisk. Scandisk is finding LOTS of things wrong. Scandisk won't even finish before it complains about running out of memory. I tried running some simple surface tests of the drive, and they reported the disk was o.k. I am fearfull that the scandisk is doing more harm then good.

Should I just keep running scandisk till it comes up clean? Or should I try to get some data of the disk and scrap it?

Also, my bios setup seems to be confused some times about how much memory I have in the box. Do I have ram failure?

Any tools people can suggest, that I can run from an emergency disk, to check my memory/cpu/disk?

 

[SYAR2003]

Goto memtest86.com
download memtest
run it and it will amke a floppy witch boot directly
into the test/diagnosis program
Let it run four to five pass .
This way you will find out if CPU & RAM is functioning properly
without starting windows.

If mem is bad it could be the cause of writing corruptions
to the disk .

 

[kummel]

So, yup, I got a bad DIMM. I will run some more extensive memory tests of the other good one. Any suggestions on how to recover what is by now a very corrupted disk? Should I just let scandisk do what it can? Or should I try copying my files off first?

 

[SYAR2003]

Can you slave connect it in another pc .
You might as well scandisk it there .
And copy files off it , but the quality of all files ,well.
There is also the datarecovery program getdataback from
runtime software

http://www.runtime.org/gdb.htm

It works great . Just dont install anything to the harddisk
b/c you will overwrite existing data.
It's possible that only some neccesay bootfiles for windows
has been corrupted . So you won't know yet really .
But you can of course recover the files as they are .

 

[kummel]

I don't have any way to slave this drive to a different computer. This is a laptop hard drive, and all my other systems are desktop. Unless I can buy some kind of conversion cable that lets me attach a laptop hard drive to a desktop ide cable.

If can't slave the drive to another box, any idea on some none windows based recovery programs? Or any suggestions on booting windows from a CD, so I can run the recovery program?

 

[SYAR2003]

Well you need to recover data to another location
than the bad one.

e.g
1)
Bad drive -------------------> New drive (recover to)
Theese in same computer
New drive
w/new installed OS

or networked

2)
PC(bad) -------ethernet------> Network PC (recover to)
Booted
with
floppy
w/network
support

So.. can you setup the verion 2) you think .


First fix the memory , so the memtest goes witout errors.

Try first is to ..
Switch on the pc and immediately
press and hold down the CTRL key.
Once the startup options appear,release the CTRL key.
Select Safe Mode and press Enter.
You are now in Windows limited version.
Run scandisk to repair any common disk faults.
If you know what caused your computer not to boot,
you can now delete that program.

If a program is not it:
Repair your Registry by selecting
Start,Run and typing "scanregw /fix"
and press enter.
This will fix any damage done to the Registry.
You can also restore your registry which replaces
your current registry with an earlier copy that was
backed up by your computer.
Click on Start,Run and type "scanregw /restore
and press Enter.


Hope this help you on the way .

Syar

 

[jbotz]

And by the way, yes, you can buy a conversion kit to be able to temporarily use a laptop hard disk in a desktop PC. Any local PC shop should have one in stock, or at least be able to get one.