A bad situation...

[KlumpDud]

My bro's computer is a pentium 333mhz gateway with a voodoo3 3000, windows 98 SE, and a 10 gig harddrive. It just recently started doing a weird thing:

I power on, bios, and it goes to the selector screen. All of the following lead me to dead ends where I have to turn off the power.

If I choose Normal, it goes to "It is now safe to turn off your computer."

If I choose Safe Mode, it goes to a blank screen saying "While initializing device VK" with a blinking cursor.

If I choose Safe w/ network support, it goes to a blank screen with a blinking cursor.

If I choose Logged, I get a blank screen saying
"While initializing device VKD:
Windows Protection Error. You need to restart you computer.
Press any key to continue..."
I press a key and it goes to "It's now safe to turn off your computer."

I don't have a bootdisk but I can borrow one from my friend if necessary.

What on earth do I do?

[morriswindgate]

http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;EN-US;q263318

[KlumpDud]

I tried it, I even used a new keyboard. Same problem.

[Kento]

Restart into pure dos mode then at the prompt type the following and press enter: (note the spaces)

scandisk /surface /all

Let it run for as long as it takes and you should be able to get back into windows when it's done and the vkd error should be gone.

[ssahl]

In other words it will be necessary to get that boot disk. You may want to just do a normal scandisk before you scan the surface of the drive as that 20 gig drive you have could take up to 8 hours.

[KlumpDud]

Ok, I ran scandisk like Kento said.

After it fixed 2 clusters and finished the drive, it said:

At least one area of drive C has sustained physical damage.
Although such damage might be caused by an isolated incident
such as a power failure, it is often a sign of impending
hardware failure.

Back up your files as soon as possible. For more information
about backing up your files, see Windows Help.

You should run ScanDisk daily for a while; if more physical
errors occur, have this drive checked by a qualified
computer hardware technician.

After that, the computer restarted, then automatically went to Microsoft Registry Checker, ran for a while, then said:

Windows found an error in your system files and restored a
recent backup of the files to fix the problem.

Press Enter to restart your computer.

After it restarted, it went to the desktop. Everything seems just fine now, but I've been meaning to install Win2k on that computer for a while now. There's no question as to whether or not I'm going to reformat. The only question is: Is my harddrive damaged? Should I buy a new one? I'm wary because since it's an older Gateway, the harddrive is mounted vertically (they probably did it to save space and/or money) and I know that when you mount a harddrive like that it's prone to long term failure.

What do you guys think?

[Hpro]

I think it isn't a good Idea to place W2k on a Bad Drive -
This is the one million dollar question - put it like that - if you format that drive after you have backed up up or saved your personal data - and you can install windows without a hitch - and also format and scandisk - (Win2K chkdsk) passes without error then the hard drive should be OK and you are lucky - if there is any error then DO NOT INSTALL a OS on that drive - as likely you will then allways have to repair bad clusters..
Hope this answers your question
Hpro

[GaryRouth]

I agree with Hpro on installing to a drive whose condition is uncertain.

Since you've been inside the box, check the make/model of the drive, and download their disk diagnostic software from their website. (For example, Western Digital's "Data LifeGuard" or Seagate's "SeaTools" or Maxtor's "MaxBlast")... They usually have some pretty intensive tests they can run on the drive that might give at least one more close look - before you have to decide what next.

Just in case they report the worst: there's a current promotion at one of the major stores (was it Best Buy or Fry's? I can't remember) that offered a Western Digital 30 GB 5400rpm drive for $50 (with the rebate thing going on). The 5400 might be a nice match for that older system, and it's cheaper than the 7200rpm models.

Hope it turns out OK
. . . Gary