Re: Ongoing HD problem:

On Mar 14, 3:32 pm, "Daave" <dcwashNOS...@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
"Navyguy" <magine...@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote in message

news:efe60d61-375f-4004-afb9-6bed9b21fb34@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

I'm not sure of exactly how I should proceed at this point or if I
need to format my HD. As I said, I only formated the partition
not the HD when installing XP using the Reinstallation CD. The
reason I wanted to format the HD in the first place was to remove
the Trojan Horse but it seems from what Dave and Ron have said
it shouldn't be there. However the chkdsk /f and corrupted MFT
problem remains. I did use the Sea Tools and scanned the HD
(see post).

I'm still confused!

How many physical hard drives do you have (and how large are they)? I
thought you had two drives that each had one partition, but that is
obviously not the case! And please indicate which partitions are on
which drives. (In the other post, you mentioned C: and E:. Where are
they?)

Also, here are comprehensive insructions for performing a clean install
on a used hard drive:

http://www.windowsxphome.windowsreinstall.com/installxpcdoldhdd/index...

Actually, that's for SP1. If you have something else, see this page:

http://www.windowsreinstall.com/winxphome/indexreinstallguides.htm

(Since you have a Dell, there's no need to enter your Product key.)

I would copy your data to save it, and then perform a destructive
install, which means deleting all the partitions (I guess you could save
any hidden ones like a diagnostic one if it exists) and starting from
scratch.

Since your hard drive is healthy, a clean install should cure what ails
you.

I have a 160G HD that I upgraded from the original 40G HD and all was
fine until the recent problems occurred re: MSN Live Hotmail not
signing on, Trojan Horse, corrupted MFT. What happened is this, I
deleted my C: drive and partitioned and formatted it. However when it
asked how big I wanted the partition I had never done this before and
was never good with numbers so I just went with the highlighted
number. In doing so it fragmented my C: drive into 127.87GB and
21.06G. So I changed the 21.06G to an E: drive which actually resides
on the C:. If you think this is confusing you can only imagine how it
must be for me who isn't that computer literate! With all these
considerations, you can well understand my desire to do a fdisk,
format and install XP(with product number). However, I've come to
another roadblock, I dont have a start up disk and the pages I found
to create one do not work on my system for one reason or another. I
can give you details if you like.


Robert
.

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