missing HAL.DLL - but that's not it - more issues pls help!

[Patrick Keenan]

When I plug it in, it tries the AUTOPLAY, so it is recognizing it, and
it even lists it in the windows explorer (F drive), but when I try to
access it, it says, no dice, and gives the error.
You are probably right that it is gone, but I have to think there is a
way of recovering some of the info on it before I go and reformat...

If the drive is failing, reformatting won't help. It's like putting new
carpet on a rotten floor.

The structure is compromised and needs to be replaced, refinishing it won't
help you; it will fail again, and soon.

Replace the drive, new drives are cheap; where I am, 500 gig drives are
around CDN$70.

Once the new drive is properly installed with the OS and drives, simply
attach the old drive and copy your data over.

HTH
-pk

 

[Mick Murphy]

Go to the Hard Drive Manufacturer's site, and download their diagnostic
software to check the state of your HD, and see if it is shafted or not.

 

[daviddschool]

Ok, I have gone and got the diagnostic tool and it says that is cannot
read the drive. I was going to trash it but instead tried some
recovery software and engineer friend of mine had and it works. I
managed to see the entire drive, although taking all of the info from
it will take weeks, I am instead going to just pick the most recent
files and important ones and forgo the rest.
I think the drive is still good and I might use it for a secondary
backup storage, but not as my main drive. I will have to repartition
and reformat this thing though. Interestingly, I am getting the 'tick
tick' directional signal noise as the recovery software works and it
did take a long time (3 hours), but it did find the entire drive. I
am only hoping my backup software works (because I haven't tried to
recover since I have been backing up my machine). Thanks for all the
help.
I am still going to try the SCANDISK /f , which I haven't tried
because CHKDSK did not seem to work (and that was really throwing me
off).

 

[Plato]

http://www.bootdisk.com/housecall/0036.htm#2

 

[daviddschool]

Plato,

As I said, I can't get to the files to change them. On the recovery
software is letting me look at the files - so I can't change the
boot.ini