Re: disk error occurred

mumbles27 wrote:

Comments inline:

I have ll data from this drive backed up apart from these hidden/locked files [see explanation later], thats my overriding worry before i try the DOS commands.

Good, then you don't have to worry.


the machine is 3 years old, but hard drive is 3 months old.

The age of the hard drive is irrelevant. Hardware will usually fail either quite soon or go for years. One of the computer science kids at my son's school (Carnegie Mellon) calls it the "bathtub" curve. The laptop isn't terribly old, but the motherboard could certainly be going. It would be sad but not unusual.

the exact text of the error is, that when the machine boots up, just after the HP logo screen and the screen where you can press f10 to access setup [the boot screen i assume?] and before it flicks on to the XP pr loading screen with the XP logo, a line of text comes up and simply says "disk error occurred/press ctrl alt del to restart".

OK, this sounds to me that the error occurs before the operating system is booted. This means that either the hard drive can't be read (fault lying with the hard drive) or that the drive controller on the motherboard isn't working properly because it can't read/find the hard drive, or even both. It could also be that the power supply isn't providing enough "juice" to get the hard drive up and spinning. The bottom line is that this is hardware and since you have a laptop, you can't swap out parts (except for the hard drive and RAM) to test. You're stuck dealing with HP or a local professional who can do hardware testing for you. Again, please understand that you shouldn't take my "diagnosis" as definitive since I can't see your machine or test it myself. But that's my opinion from what you're describing.

these "locked files" are not the hidden files or system files. i dont know what to call them but when you create a user profile in XP, that user profile creates a folder of that username under "documents and settings". Unless you specifically change the settings of this folder, to which i havent, this folder and its subsequent files are not accessable to thjer users of the machine if you have multi users on one machine. When you plug that drive in to another machine as a hard drive it wont read that dir as i assume it looks at the user and login and sees its not the same user or machine?. Does that make sense? i generally unlock this locked dir as i have had major problem with it before but as i have just completed reinstalling everything on this drive, i hadnt got around to it. It holds my 5 substancial outlook pst files which is why i need access to it.

No, I can't say as the above makes any sense to me. You should be able to get that data from another machine UNLESS the hard drive is physically damaged where those files are. The whole point of taking ownership is that you don't need to be the user who created the files on the target drive. You change the ownership of those files to a user with administrative privileges on the host machine and that causes this user to now own the files. The only other exception I can think of is if you encrypted those files with third-party software such as TrueCrypt or the like. You would know if you did this. If you did, then you need to contact the tech support people of that third-party software for help.

Another way of retrieving data on a hard drive is to boot into a live CD rescue system such as Knoppix or a Bart's PE. I'll give you the basic instructions for using Knoppix, but if you did use third-party encryption that's probably not going to help.

You will need a computer with two cd drives, one of which is a cd/dvd-rw OR a usb thumb drive with enough capacity to hold your data OR an external usb/firewire hard drive formatted FAT32 (not NTFS). To get Knoppix, you need a computer with a fast Internet connection and third-party burning software. Download the Knoppix .iso and create your bootable cd. Then boot with it and it will be able to see the Windows files. If you are using the usb thumb drive or the external hard drive, right-click on its icon (on the Desktop) to get its properties and uncheck the box that says "Read Only". Then click on it to open it. Note that the default mouse action in the window manager used by Knoppix (KDE) is a single click to open instead of the traditional MS Windows' double-click. Otherwise, use the K3b burning program to burn the files to cd/dvd-r's.

http://www.knoppix.net
http://www.nu2.nu/pebuilder/ - Bart's PE Builder


Malke
--
Elephant Boy Computers
www.elephantboycomputers.com
"Don't Panic!"
MS-MVP Windows - Shell/User
.

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