> From:    Philippe J Beaulieu <[log in to unmask]>
>
> My friend has a computer that needs a lot of work, upon bootup we get an
> error message stating  " sector not found reading drive c
>                             abort,retry,ignore,fail "
>
> doing ignore 2-3 times brings us to the normal bacground, an error message
> stating video adaptor or display is not set and may cause a problem, trying
> to navagate by keyboaed mostly doesnt work and the mouse is dead
>  all help greatly appreciated
> philippe beaulieu

------------------------------

Sounds like a crashed Hard Drive.  You may be able to recover some data if
you put it into a working machine and set it up as a slave (or on the other
IDE channel).

Copy whatever you can off of it and either send it back (if it is under
warranty) or throw it away.

No real wa to save it as far as I know.

-Rob

------------------------------

Worst case - a head crashed and plowed a big hole in the Master Boot Record,
or the boot sector.  Physical damage like that, and your operating system
won't even try to start.  Your only hope is that it is still under warranty.

On the other hand, this system seems to make it through MBR and boot, and
is stumbling part way into <Windows?>.  The surface of the disk could even be
OK, with just the data messed up by a virus or a bad write caused by, say,
a power glitch.

Try to save as much data as you can. Scan for viruses. A clean boot from
a floppy could help. Hope you have good backups.

Check the drive manufacturer's site for surface scan and low level format
software for that model of drive. You may be able to salvage the drive.
If you lose a few sectors to physical damage, don't use this drive for
critical storage, and keep good backups, as there may be some particles
still flying around inside the drive - which could cause another crash.
Or it might run another ten years.

Let us know what you find.

Good luck!

Boyd Ramsay

[log in to unmask]

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