My computer has been doing some strange things. If Windows 98 crashes,
I usually just click Start, Shutdown, Restart, to reboot it. But,
starting last week, it didn't work. Windows would shut down, but the
computer wouldn't reboot, but just showed a blank screen. To reboot it,
I had to turn the computer off, then back on. Even the reset switch
didn't work. So, I did some diagnostics. I reflashed the BIOS, ran
scandisk, scanreg, and the System File checker. Everything checked out
OK.
Now, today, I turned on the machine, and it wouldn't boot. I saw the
normal BIOS messages on the screen, and then nothing, and I didn't hear
the hard drive turn on. So, I hit the computer where the hard drive is
with the heel of my hand, and I heard it spin up to speed, and then the
computer booted. So, I turned the computer off, then opened it, and
checked all the connections and they seem solid. I assume that this
means that the hard drive might be about to fail. correct?
Assuming that it is about to fail, and I'd like to preserve what's
already on it, would the following procedure probably work:
1) Buy a new hard drive.
2) Copy Format.com, and Xcopy.exe to the Windows Start-Up diskette
(since they're not already there).
3) install the new hard drive as a slave to the current failing drive (I
assume there are switches on the drive to make it a slave).
4) boot the computer from the diskette
5) format the new hard drive with the /S option. (Is there a Format
option to make the hd Fat32?)
6) Xcopy everything from the failing drive to the new drive. (or use
XCopy32.exe instead? What is XCopy32, BTW?)
7) turn off the machine, remove the bad drive, and change the switch on
the new drive to make it the master, and not the slave.
TIA.
If you know, could you email me directly, since I won't get the digest
again for another 24 hours, but I'd like to know something sooner? BTW,
previously, if I wanted to see messages before they got to the digest, I
could go to the SurvPC website and browse, but the message database
seems to have stopped around the end of March. So, now I can't see
messages until they get to the digest.
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