OS: Windows XP Pro
RAM: 2 sticks of 256 MB
HD: 200GB
Problem:
Windows XP will not load at all.
Some weeks ago, I tried repeatedly to resize my partitions and kept receiving errors about bad sectors. This was a very bad time for me to format so I ignored the messages Partition Magic gave me for the time being.
Now a few days ago, there were two power surges through my house while the computer was on. I'm not saying this did or didnt have anything to do with my problem, but when I came back, the computer had restarted itself. I logged in and received a blue screen. This didn't phase me too much because as of late I had started receiving a lot of blue screens (but hadn't done anything about it because I didn't want to risk losing my data). To cut the story short, Windows never came back. Every time I restarted, I would get a blue screen. I used HDD Regenerator on my hard drive, it found some bad sectors and fixed them. Because I simply cannot afford to lose my data, I've tried to reinstall Windows instead of format. The install goes through smoothly but whenever I restart the computer, it crashes after showing the loading screen with a dim Win XP logo very briefly. The error message I get is:
STOP: 0x0000007B (0xF894D63C,0xC0000034,0x0
0000000,0x
00000000)
along with some proposed explanations. What I did then was I tried to use my True Image CD to access my old partition images. But whenever I try to access them, I get a:
"Failed to read from the sector 80,546,808 of the hard disk 0" message.
I've used some partition recovery programs to look at my partitions and they are all still intact and the programs have allowed me to browse their contents just fine. Incidentally, when I try to reinstall WinXP, it goes through the blue screen where it copies files to the drive and then restarts. After that restart in particular, the loading screen crash problem that I described earlier goes AWAY and it looks like Windows XP is loading just fine, the blue progress bar is animating and all. But after the install is finished, the computer reboots itself and then the same error message reappears.
I've tried using one memory stick at a time and running memory tests (which all show nothing wrong). So I think the problem is with the hard drive. But I cannot afford to lose the information on there and I cannot at this time afford to buy a new one.
It is absolutely crucial that I retrieve the information on those partitions. I have even tried to get windows XP to even do a fresh install on some unallocated free space (without removing the old install on the separate partition) but it crashes and gives me the same error after I press enter to give it the go ahead.
My suggestions are that the problem is a drive problem and possibly some kind of file problem since it seems to momentarily go away whenever I try to do a reinstall. I am 100% sure this is not a virus problem because of the circumstances as well as the fact that I had an antivirus running and the internet disconnected at the last time I used it.
I'll be fine if I can at least install XP on a different partition and then afterwards, get the data from the other partitions..
And one more thing:
When I run HDD Regenerator, it shows 4 'partitions' (or whatever they are supposed to represent). The first one is about 197+ GB (if I do some rough mental math). The other three are all 160 MB in size and as I'm running HDD Regenerator on the first 160 MB 'partition', it's coming up with nothing but bad sectors. It doesn't look like they are being fixed either. I think the bad sectors discovered on the 197GB partition were fixed though. Specifically, the program says "Scanned 0 MB, 350+ bad sectors found" When I run it on the large partition the MB count increases with the sectors scanned so I'm thinking either there is no information here or this inconsistency is a part of the problem.
This is really as urgent as it gets. Thanks in advance for all your help.
P.S. Maybe this is in the wrong section? But I'm not sure where it would belong.
