Hard Drive failure ?

[chris@panteg]

Guy's any computer wizzo's on here

On my Family pc (not my personal one thankfully) i think it had a really bad virus ( teenager's :steam:) randomly crashing ' rebooting ' the usual stuff .

Now i have tried to reformat ' and having done so ' all i get on start up is this

windows root>\ system 32\hall.dll please install the missing file :scratch:
i think the hdd is toast but could something else be damaged , what a mare and wifey and stepdaughter are looking to me sort it out :hmm::unfair:.

Any ideas ' had a search on the net but does not look good , new HDD and fresh install , only option :(

[DSJR]

if Windows/system32 is on the drive, it doesn't appear to have been fullr re-formatted....

I'm not able to do a step by step form of what to do, but if there's stuff on the drive you want, try a Windows repair it it's an option (on XP), get it running, save everything you need to save and then do a fresh Windows install having RE-PARTITIONED the drive..

If the drive just has some errors rather than starting to fall over, a chkdsk can be done (my computer, right click the drive, tools, error checking, and check BOTH little boxes before starting it. You'll then have to re-boot and let it do its work before it will re-start windows.

Of course, if you have Vista or W7, the above should be ignored.....

I hope my amateurish ramblings above are helpful in a small way. It's essential to do regular disc-cleanups/de-fragments and a good registry cleaner comes in very handy (C Cleaner is free and I also use Uniblue Registry booster 2 and on both I save the backups/deleted files).

That computer does have a firewall and anti-virus doesn't it? Current Norton seems ok and the gui is easy for the likes of me to follow.

[Themis]

Chris, I hope that when you say "reformat" you mean "clean install" (booting on the windows DVD).

So:
Either your HD is damaged (do a full format while you clean install) or your win DVD is damaged. :(

[chris@panteg]

Thanks guy's but the problem is it won't let me do anything ' just a blank screen i tried formatting the the partition (d) on my other pc probably a bad move , most of the important stuff has been saved to the Partition (f) its a 160 gig (d 127 gig) and (f 22 gig) .

It must have been a really bad virus as it screwed up the dvd/cd rewriter , the anti virus is installed or was , the d partition is now formatted ' .

I am normally ok with setting up win xp ' but this is something new to me .

[smurfbrain]

Chris below there is llink to complete guide how to repair your pc. It also contain sublinks for each step.
http://pcsupport.about.com/od/findbyerrormessage/a/missinghaldll.htm

[Rare Bird]

Believe me chris it's easier to install a new HDD.

[Primalsea]

Hi Chris,

If you get it working again have a read up on how to set up more than one account on the PC. Keep your one with full administrator access password protected and the other with limited control open for the family.

People using the account with limited control wont be able to set up new software or make major systems changes. This should help protect you, in part, from future problems.

[chris@panteg]

Thanks Guy's for all the help ' all this faffing around with pc's means less time listening to music and the Techie:brickwall:

[DSJR]

It's how you learn about computers though..........

[spendorman]

Maxblast (free) is a good tool if you have a Maxtor or Seagate hard drive in the PC. It is a free version of Acronis.

Maxblast helps one prepare the HD for the operating system.

[spendorman]

If there is no Maxtor or Seagate HD in the system, one can connect an external Maxtor/ Seagate and then Maxblast will work on the non Maxtor/ Seagate drives

[mike1210]

http://www.tweakhound.com/xp/installxp/installXP1.htm

may be of use to re-build

[Maximum]

Did you do a full format on the partition or a quick one? It could just have been a one off so it's worth having another go at installing it if you haven't already. I suppose there maybe a chance a virus survived on a boot record or the other partition but it seems unlikely as what you describe seems to be drive related. This is where a linux live boot disc comes in handy as you can look at the drive without booting from it.

[chris@panteg]

So sorry for not getting back to you on this ' i managed to reformat the drive , what a palava though ' windows XP now reinstalled , i just switched the sata cables around and it worked ' very strange .