[Samantha0101]

Hello,

Not only does my university internet not work my computer now has decided to die

Last night I turned PC on, wrote something on notepad and then put a DVD in to watch. Clicked to use Nero to watch it and it crashed, so i took the disk out and used task manager to end Nero, put the disk back in and tried again and the same thing happened only this time a yellow message came up from the toolbar saying that a file had corrupted, a lot of boxes came up about various programs not being able to run and then a message saying that the file had been recovered successfully. The computer crashed again so i restarted, logged back into my account and more windows came up again saying the programs that run on startup couldn't run.
I restarted again and it came up with the 'Do you want to load up in safemode, safe mode w/ networking, safe mode w/ command prompts or normally -- I chose normally, it wouldn't get further than the windows screen and hard drive light was on continuously (as opposed to flashing). Restarted again and chose safe mode, a load of command lines came up with different .dll and .sys files on it and then it stopped and restarted the computer (tried a couple more times, same thing happened). Next time I loaded it said there was a read disk error press Ctrl Alt + Delete to restart. I left it after that.
Today decided to try booting from XP disk, put that in and got the screen where it asks what you want to do but wasn't sure what to press - if i use Recovery Console will i lose everything?
I text my friend who knows more than me about computers and he said that it's likely RC would wipe the hard drive but that I could set up a partition and hope it doesnt go wrong and recover everything that way - could i do that? I've never set up a partition by myself or used RC. At first he said to use a slave but I've not got anything but my computer at university (we had two systems at home).
Documents are not backed up and desperately don't want to have to re-format.

Help appreciated.

[Hybr!d]

Please do not start duplicate threads, thanks.

[Samantha0101]

Helpful.
Didn't know where to put it and as it takes days for people to reply here I thought putting it in places where people specialise in both fields that my problem applies to would give me more chance of fixing it ASAP.

[Hybr!d]

Oh sorry, is the free service here not good enough, jeez.

[Samantha0101]

Mm.
I'm just annoyed right now.
I'll just have to try figure it out by myself and hope I don't blow myself up in the process..or worse, lose everything.

[Glaswegian]

The whole point of the Recovery Console is to recover your Windows set up - AFAIK it will NOT wipe the hard drive.

A useful guide can be found here

http://www.windowsnetworking.com/art.../wxprcons.html

Another possibility is that your hard disk is on the way out. Make sure you back up whatever you can - just in case.

[philthomas]

Try running chkdsk /r from the command prompt in the Recovery Console.
This will check for bad sectors on the hard drive and recover them if possible.

If no improvement try fixmbr and fixboot, from the command prompt in Recovery Console, if there's a probleb with the Master Boot Record etc. this may solve it.

[Samantha0101]

Ok, I tried RC and it won't even come on. My computer now says that there is no hard disk drive connected - I've unplugged and replugged it three times (well, the SATA lead thingy).
It says to run a diagnostic but I don't have anything?
Can't boot from hard drive 'cause there now isn't one apparently.
Friend told me to do a master & slave but is there not an easier way?

[philthomas]

Does the Hard Drive show in bios ?

[Samantha0101]

Umm, I'm not sure..It doesn't show on the start up screen.
I found this: http://www.windowsreinstall.com/winx...exfullpage.htm
What would this do? Would I have to completely re-install Windows again using that?
Really not wanting to lose my documents or programs - not backed up in a few months and only have basic program disks at university with me.

EDIT:
Or, would this work?

"In the unlikely event that you cannot fix it, your files are not lost so don't worry, just make sure you don't "Format" your hard drive. If you cannot boot into windows you can download a "linux boot disk" from the internet. I recommend Knoppix, and after burning the files onto a CD you stick it into your computer allowing you to boot into the linux operating system, which will let you backup and save your files onto another disk or hard drive so that you can then completely erase and reinstall your windows operating system. "