Might take a chance

[jessho]

After a power failure, my wife's computer wouldn't reboot. It's in a loop and never loads windows; it repeats the options menus for loading Windows XP home edition. The drive is loud when starting. The noise is similar to a bad fan motor; squealing at start and then it's quiet. At this point, there is no clicking, so there might be a chance of salvage. My question:

If I manage to get the drive to boot in Windows after using the recovery programs on the CD, would your recommend miiroring the drive on a new drive? I'd rather do this, but don't won't too make things worse.

I'm open to suggestions.

The drive is a Western Digital WD800. The system is about 5 years old and has been stable to this point. I don't want to upgrade at this point because I'm leaning towards a laptop instead of a desk top.

[Powertrip]

If your almost certian it is the drive and not the power problems that caused your OS to be corrupted here are a few options:

Chances are if windows is even starting to boot then your hard drive's data may very well be in tact. You could remove your hard drive and install it in an external enclosure and recover your files and documents from another PC.

Once you have your data safe you could then run Western Digital Diagnostics available at http://support.wdc.com/download/index.asp?cxml=n&pid=15&swid=30
Burn the image to a CD with nero or any burning app and then boot your troubled PC from CD. Run full diagnostics. This will tell you if your drive is healthy.

Recovering from your OS CD makes good sence if your drive passes diagnostics you may be good to go for years to come.

Also try booting into safe mode with F8 and use start/run/msconfig and set PC to selective startup. This may cause your PC to boot without running the recovery CD.

Google "Disable automatic restart" to stop your PC from rebooting. This will give you a nice BSOD with an error message that you can paste here.

Good luck man, hope that helps some.

[jessho]

Thanks

[meeleend]

Thanks Powertrip,
My name is meeleend,I am new on this forum.

[jessho]

The new drive is installed and Windows XP is loaded. Recovery wasn't successful. I installed the new drive as secondary master, so I have a dual boot system. At this point, I want to transfer files and settings, but it seems the old drive needs to be running windows to run the wizard. I'm looking for another way to transfer these settings.