it fails the diagnostic . How do i attempt a repair?

does this mean complete hard drive is shot? I am out of warranty - i cannot try anything to restore to previous date?

If the hard drive fails the diagnostic, disconnect and replace it with a new one, reload and patch Windows, and then reconnect the failed drive as a secondary. Copy what you can; if you can't get it all, and need the data, consider a data recovery service. That option isn't cheap but will get your data back when home remedies fail.

If there's data on the drive you need that isn't backed up start here:

Attach the drive to a working desktop running XP and copy your data for backup.

DO NOT PROCEED WITHOUT A BACKUP - DOING SO COULD BE FATAL TO YOUR DATA.

Return the drive to the notebook. Boot, press F12 and run the extended diagnostics on the drive. If the drive passes, skip the next step.

If the drive fails and you're under warranty, call Dell, report the error and they'll ship you a new drive.

If the drive fails and you're out of warranty, bin it and replace it.

If the drive passes, you can continue to try a repair (which fails more often than it succeeds) or bite the bullet and reinstall everything from scratch.

Recovery usually fails to restore the registry; in about 70-80% of all cases, it's a hardware fault that causes the problem.

Nope; the drive was failing.

The "famous blue screen" belongs to Microsoft, not Dell.

what about the article I see  avail.  for "recover from a corrupted registry that prevents Windows XP from starting"

Is this still an option?

 

I wanted to try it but just discovered my wife threw out the windows xp cd!

so this is not related to what ever i was doing  when it failed?

 It was working fine then seemed to freeze and a clicking noise started intermittently. I thought at first it did not  like the software but sounds like a famous dell blue screen.

It's not worth trying on a drive that's known to be failing. You'll likely wind up with an even bigger, potentially completely unrecoverable mess.

You're going to need to either borrow a Dell OEM XP CD or go and buy a copy of XP at retail anyway, no matter what path you choose.

i appreciate your response.

I am curious why microsoft would have an article on the  procedure to correct failed registry if it is a hopeless excercise.

thx robert

There are reasons other than hardware failure for a corrupt registry. In those cases, it may be worth attempting a repair - even then, the process fails more often than it succeeds.

Since your drive has developed bad sectors, which will continue to propagate, trying a repair may leave you with a completely unreadable drive.

You should be able to use any EIDE hard drive - though unless you've got an XP install CD with SP1 or SP2 on it, 137G is as large a partition as you can build until you apply SP1 or SP2.

Western Digital, Seagate, Samsung and Hitachi all make good IDE drives.

ok where is best buy on a hard drive ? I guess upgrade is now in store. Can you reccomen what to get?

I have a dell dimension 2350  with PROCESSOR, 80532,2.0G, 512k, 400, socket N, C1

Message Edited by typhoon55 on 10-08-2005 05:30 PM

thx . when i install new hard drive ,  there is no formatting - just power up & go?

The formatting is done as part of the installation of Windows.

You'll need your Windows CD, a CD with the chipset, audio, network, modem, video, etc. drivers. If you do not have SP2 on the installation CD, you'll want that as well.

It also helps to have a broadband connection (cable, DSL) because there are multiple patches post-SP2 you'll need.

You'll also need your application software CDs and whatever backups of data you have.

Plan on setting aside at least several hours for the project - it takes 3-4 hours just to get Windows installed, patched and running properly.