Obviously the most important thing is to save your data, and you shouldn't do anything to compromise that. However you may not have to reload XP. Generally it's not possible to copy the drive partition where the operating system is, but there is a free program that can do this called xxclone (at www.xxclone.com/). If you can save your data first, you could put a new drive in your PC (preferably already partitioned) and run xxclone - beware it will wipe any data on the partition you clone into. I used this last year when I had a "clicking drive". Cloning takes quite a long time (~20-30 mins I recall), so it was nerveracking to see if the drive would last long enough, but it worked. The clone was slightly smaller than the original, but everything seemed to work fine, and it still does one year on.
As the cloning process takes longer than copying the data, I guess the drive is more likely to fail, so I repeat that you shouldn't attempt it until your data is safe. However if you can get it to work you are saved the major hassle and time of having to reload everything. good luck Alistair (the lurker) On Mon, Aug 18, 2008 at 8:21 AM, Doug Franklin <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > David J Brooks wrote: > >> Also something seems to click a few times at start up. Now it started. >> >> Is this my HD acting up. > > Something clicking at startup is usually the hard drive, though it could > also be the CD/DVD drive or the floppy drive (if you have one). To > confirm the problem, if you can get Windows XP to boot and run, click on > "Start", then "Run" and type "eventvwr" into the "Open" edit box. When > the Event Viewer window appears, click on "System" in the left hand > pane, then click on the "Source" column in the right hand pane to sort > by source. Look for all warnings and errors from the "disk" source to > see any problems that Windows XP has been "reporting" for your disks. > > In terms of getting going again, the best bet would probably be to > remove the offending drive and install a replacement, get XP installed > and running on that new drive, then install the old drive as "D:" (or > whatever) and copy whatever you can/want from the old drive to the new > one before the old one gives up the ghost forever. > > -- > Thanks, > DougF (KG4LMZ) > > -- > PDML Pentax-Discuss Mail List > [email protected] > http://pdml.net/mailman/listinfo/pdml_pdml.net > to UNSUBSCRIBE from the PDML, please visit the link directly above and > follow > the directions. > -- PDML Pentax-Discuss Mail List [email protected] http://pdml.net/mailman/listinfo/pdml_pdml.net to UNSUBSCRIBE from the PDML, please visit the link directly above and follow the directions.
