Vista - Hard Disk May be Corrupt *not sure*

Hey Guys,

Got a laptop of a freinds here that has quite an interesting problem. It came vista pre installed and a few days ago it stopped working. I'll elaborate: It boots up but when it comes to the screen with "microsoft Corporation" and a loading bar it hangs there, in effect "continually loading". It never stops, just keeps going. Anyway I first thought that the OS was in some way at fault so I downloaded a vista Repair disk (The Laptop was bought with Vista so I dont have an install disk) and tried to repair it using that. This was a failure. I went through the reapir disk and it came up with the usuall "Your PC may restart several times, if its fixed it will boot normally else the disk will run again and continue" buisness. Now every time I got to a point where it wanted me to restart I do so but the PC would then boot up and give me the "press any key to boot CD" This confused me as if the reapair was incomplete then shouldn't the CD boot automatically. At first I thought maybe it had fixed the error first time. Sadly not. So I tried again and this time pressed a key to go back to the CD expecting it to continue, instead I start from the beggining. Now I figured that if the disk wasn't going to repair the laptop then at least I could do something useful with it. So I opened up CMD prompt and ran some checks, they all seemed to indicate the Hard Disk was fine. But when I restarted the PC and ran the HP disk Check, which is no doubt part of the BIOS, it came up with a rather strange error message after 49% of the quick test.

Primary Hard Disk Self Test
49 % Complete .....
Failed - Replace Hard Disk 1 (Warranty ID - error code 10008)
Press (Esc) to Continue

Now that is as far as I've got. My freind says that he knows no reason why it wont start and that there is no backup disks or the like with the laptop (frankly I find that hard to believe but I'm working off his assurances). Any Input on a solution or anything would be apreciated.

ChevronTango

Definitely sounds like a bad disk. Things happen even if you havent owned it for long.

Hey all,
I have a similar issue (predicting HDD failure /corruption) however
unfortunately, i do not have any built in diagnostic utilities in the
BIOS. Can anyone recommend & or suggest a free HDD bootable check
utility for my vista laptop?

Thank you in advanced,
T


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tjn
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tjn wrote:
None of us knows what the "similar issue is". See below for why. In the
meantime, if you are looking for a hard drive diagnostic utility, get one
from the drive mftr.'s website. Seagate's SeaTools also works well if you
can't find a utility from your drive mftr. or aren't sure what to use.

Now, here's why we don't see the post to which you refer:

You are not posting on a real forum as you think you are and you didn't
quote any of the thread to which you are replying. You are using a web
interface that leeches Usenet posts and most of the rest of us are using
real newsreaders. We don't see what you do. If you want to participate in
Usenet, the better way is to set up a newsreader. This is very easy to do
and I'll give you information about that below. If you prefer to use a
forum, then here are two excellent ones:

http://forum.aumha.org/index.php
http://http://computerhaven.info/

Since you are using a web interface, you may not realize that this is really
a newsgroup. You will get far more out of this resource if you learn to use
a newsreader. There are many good newsreaders for Windows, but you can use
Outlook Express (XP) or Windows Mail (Vista) since you already have it.
Here are some links to information about newsgroups:

About Usenet:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Usenet
http://www.faqs.org/faqs/ - Usenet FAQs from the Internet FAQ Archives
http://www.usenetmonster.com/infocenter/
http://www.elephantboycomputers.com/page2.html#Usenet - a brief explanation
of newsgroups

Outlook Express/Windows Mail as Newsreader:
http://michaelstevenstech.com/outloo...snewreader.htm
http://rickrogers.org/setupoe.htm
http://vistasupport.mvps.org/accessi...ndows_mail.htm

How to Post:
http://www.elephantboycomputers.com/page2.html#Usenet
http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx/kb/555375 - How to Ask a Question
http://users.tpg.com.au/bzyhjr/liszt.htm - How Not to Get Technical Help on
Usenet
http://www.catb.org/~esr/faqs/smart-questions.html

http://aumha.org/nntp.htm - list of MS newsgroups
microsoft.public.test.here - MS group to test if your newsreader is working
properly
http://www3.telus.net/dandemar/munad.htm - how to munge email address
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crossposting - crossposting
http://www.blakjak.demon.co.uk/mul_crss.htm - multiposting

Other Newsreaders for Windows:
http://www.forteinc.com/main/homepage.php - Forte
http://www.mozilla.org - Thunderbird

Malke
--
MS-MVP
Elephant Boy Computers - Don't Panic!
FAQ - http://www.elephantboycomputers.com/#FAQ