Hard Drive corrupted

[Guest]

I think the hard drive on my laptop has been corrupted. Windows acts like it
is going to start correctly, but ends up just showing the wallpaper; no other
icons. I think I need to reformat the drive and start from scratch. The
problem there is that when I go to format the drive, I get the error that the
drive is in use, and needs to be dismounted. When I click "yes" to dismount,
I get the message that the drive cannot be locked. Any suggestions?

 

[Guest]

You can,install xp cd,boot to xp cd,recovery,select 1 For C: Press enter key
for password,type:CHKDSK C: /R This fixes or attempts to bad sectors on the
hd.Or in recovery,typeiskPart In DiskPart delete the partition,create
one,press
ESC key,type:EXIT Reboot to xp cd,select install xp.And/or download the
MS-DOS
utility from the hd mfg,install to formatted MS-DOS floppy,boot to
floppy,run the
tests,some may run off a cd...

 

[peter]

On my laptop while it boots I press a series of keys and it starts the
"recovery" process from a hidden partition or a different set of keys and it
boots from the recovery DVD that I created with an up to date copy of my
HD....as explained in my manual.
What does your manual say??
Of course if you have a retail copy of XP you just boot from it and start a
new install...formatting the HD in the process.

peter

 

[Ted Zieglar]

Right-click on the desktop and select 'Arrange Icons By'. Put a check
mark next to 'Show Desktop Icons'.

 

[GTS]

"reformat[ting] the drive and start[ing] from scratch is the last resort",
not the starting point, for addressing problems. It's likely that you have
a corrupted user profile which may or may not be due to disk errors. Run
chkdsk /f to address possible data corruption. If this reports significant
problems, you might also run chkdsk /r (to check for bad sectors). If the
hard drive is alright, log in as administrator (or use the current account
if it's an admin acct) and create a new User from control panel. Log in to
the new account and do some testing. If things work well see "How to copy
data from a corrupted user profile to a new profile"
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/811151/en-us