Ok while things are up and running a little maybe you can start with a chkdsk. It will scan the hard drives and repair them. Repair is actually kinda vauge because all it does really is puts bad sectors asided (in a matter of speaking) so that data doesnt get stored on them. It might be a temp fix but it should buy you some time.
Go to start--->run----> type "chkdsk /r"
It should tell you it cant do it cause the volume is being used. And asks if you want to run chkdsk upon next restart type "y" for yes and then restart the easy child. It will take a while!
Sorry if this is broke down too simplified I just dont know how much computer knowledge you have so I always just break it down for people. :smile:
Also as far as the XP disk there is a work around. There is nothing that says your friend can not have his XP on 2 different easy child's. So hopefully he is a "good friend" :smile: I actually have a registered copy of XP at home and then one across town at my sisters house...even a registered copy in California. I guess I am a "good friend" to a few people!
Someone else suggested getting another serial key and to be honest I have never had much luck with that. Kinda like yours didnt work with his disk. The disk is set up to take only certain serial keys. I kinda confirmed this about 8 months ago when I lost my key and had to call Microsoft for it. (it costs 20 bucks) It took them a while to generate a key and so I asked the lady "whats taking so long" and she said she had to generate a key that my cd would accept. They look up the info of the disk and then generate a key based the encryption of that disk.
Anyway try the chkdsk. Watch it if you can and see how many errors it detects. If there are alot its only going to be a matter of time before you start having problems again. But it should buy you some time so you can maybe save up to buy a hard drive. You situatuion sounds alot like one I went through one time. Eventually the hard drive crashed and upon doing a reformat it wouldnt even mount or accept an operating system.
Also if you get this to work try to limit the number of restarts you do with your computer. I know some people hard hard pressed to turn thier computers off but leave it on and just let it go in stand by mode. Turning your computer on and off is actually hard on the hard drive as it has to scan more to load the OS.
With mine I had a over heating problem and the easy child would just turn off by itself. Since I already had HD problems to begin with the restarting of the hard drive is what finally did it in. One morning I woke up turned on the easy child and got "no operating system found" and when I tried to put it back on there I basically got the "
you" freeze up screen. You know the screen...the one where you see the Windows screen and it just sits there teasing you!
