Rebuild my hard drive?

[ray124c41]

I have WinXP Pro SP2. I also have (so far) the following problems:

1) The system will not go into standby on its own, or only partially does
so. (The monitor shuts off after the specified interval, but the hard dirive
doesn't.) It does go into standby if I hit the sleep button, which is what
I've specified it should do.

2) System restore doesn't work, although this could be because I recently
installed Visual Basic Express, but maybe not. It was working before that.
I did turn off Product Protection in Norton Internet Security, I even turned
off Auto-Protect. I have a System Recovery Partition on my C drive, but
System Restore is only operative for the C:\ partition as is necessary for
System Restore to function.
Anyway, I did all this before and System Restore worked.

3) My (HP) printer won't print. When I try to print something, I get a
message saying that the driver(s) need to be reinstalled or some such thing.


I tried to deduce what startup process was causing the standby problem, if
any, by using msconfig. I started by disabling all the processes and this
fixed it. I then narrowed it down to 2 references to the Logitech Desktop
Messenger program. One reference's location is Common Startup and the other
is a Registry key. When I disabled them both, standby seemed to happen when
scheduled, at first. But after a while it seemed that only the monitor was
shutting down, so it's not fixed.

Some of the symptoms may have been caused by a power failure, which happened
before all the symptoms appeared, I think. The printer was having problems,
but at least it would print. As to the other problems, I can't say when they
appeared relative to the power failure. (Of course I have surge protection,
but that doesn't protect you from all the effects of fluctuations, only from
having your stuff fried.)

Anyway, I have my data backed up, but not an image of the hard drive, so if
I want to have a fully functional system again, I'll have to rebuild it,
unless someone can tell me how to fix this mess.

Once the system is OK I will get Ghost or TrueImage or whatever. You
betcha!!

 

[Ridge Runner]

You do not"rebuild"
To "rebuild"means rebuilding your pc and NOT the hard drive.
Format it
Reinstall Windows
That will cure it.

 

[ray124c41]

Of course I know I can reinstall the operating system! That fixes anything
except broken hardware. The question is, 'Is there something less drastic I
can do?'.

To respond to your criticism of my use of the idiom (Admittedly a waste of
everyone's time.) :

Gadzooks! Methinks yet another pedant! By the way, you committed the sin
you just accused me of. Do you see it?

Anyway, I didn't invent the terminology. I have seen other people refer to
the process of returning their hard drive to a state resembling the one it
was in before they had such a terrible problem, as rebuilding their hard
drive.

And, in programmer lingo, the result of compiling and linking source code is
often referred to as a 'build', and the process of creating a software
program or system is sometimes referred to as 'building'. So the use of the
word 'build' in the present context is not at all unusual.

Are you the same guy who insisted that DOS isn't DOS?

I ask the rest of you who read this mess, to forgive me , but I couldn't
resist having a little fun. Hope you had fun too.

And I really would an answer to my question.

 

[ray124c41]

--
ray124c41

Of course I know I can reinstall the operating system! That fixes anything
except broken hardware. The question is, 'Is there something less drastic I
can do?'.

To respond to your criticism of my use of the idiom (Admittedly a waste of
everyone's time.) :

Gadzooks! Methinks yet another pedant! By the way, you committed the sin
you just accused me of. Do you see it?

Anyway, I didn't invent the terminology. I have seen other people refer to
the process of returning their hard drive to a state resembling the one it
was in before they had such a terrible problem, as rebuilding their hard
drive.

And, in programmer lingo, the result of compiling and linking source code is
often referred to as a 'build', and the process of creating a software
program or system is sometimes referred to as 'building'. So the use of the
word 'build' in the present context is not at all unusual.

Are you the same guy who insisted that DOS isn't DOS?

I ask the rest of you who read this mess, to forgive me , but I couldn't
resist having a little fun. Hope you had fun too.

And I really would like an answer to my question.

 

[ray124c41]

Sorry. Don't bother trying to answer my question. I just discovered that
another program (Retrospect) is severely damaged, which makes it all too
obvious that a complete reinstallation is likely the only way to fix
everything.

Thanks anyway.