John
Replace the hdd asap.. re-installing Windows will not fix bad sectors..
it
just avoids them.. save all important data to CD or some other
medium..
No it won't actually repair them, but a lot of times, you may not get
bad sectors for a long period of time and the hd is usable and the
basic problem is patched\fixed\ignored. I have a 6 year old maxtor 80
gig that had this problem twice and it still runs like a charm. I
simply back my data , which should be done anyway.
The chances of Time Computers having recovery CDs for your computer is
zero,
most likely.. if you can, go to one of their stores, as calling the
technical support is expensive.. if you can, find a supplier who will
sell
you a new hard drive and OEM Windows XP SP2 CD..
There is a three year extended warranty and you get charged according
to your policy when you bought the pc. If the op has his, he might
still be under warranty and might get free calls.
Disconnect the present drive, and fit the new one.. install Windows..
once
up and running, reconnect the old drive as a slave and recover anything
you
might have missed when you saved stuff.. email and address book for
instance.. before connecting to the internet, ensure that the XP
firewall is
running, then connect and do the updates to Windows and your preferred
ant-virus and firewall programs..
Fit the new one? That might be jumping the gun a bit, the op doesn't
even know what to get yet. The op doesn't know if he can install
windows..eg, hidden windows files, try to copy to another hard drive.
Unless Time supplied bundled software on CD, you will lose that.. to
make up
for it, Serif offer some great free downloads at
http://www.freeserifsoftware.com/ .. they may not be the latest
versions,
but they are all good solid programs.. Open Office is a free office
suite..
it is not exactly MS Office 2003, but gets good enough reviews from
some..
http://www.openoffice.org/product/
Good solid programs as long as you agree for them to send your info to
other places and send you junk mail. If you don't mind that then yes.
Good luck..
