The device, \Device\Harddisk0\DR0, has a bad block.

In Windows XP you attempt repair on bad clusters/sectors by doing this.  Windows Vista should be similar.

Go to My Computer
Right Click on the drive you want to do this on, and choose Properties
Go to the Tools tab.
Go to Error Checking and click the Check Now button
You have an option there to Attempt recovery of bad sectors.

Note: In most cases bad sectors or clusters are not recovered but marked as bad so the system avoids them in future. Recovery of bad sectors mainly will attempt to move or recover any data kept in the bad sectors, not actually fix the sector. That is usually impossible.

This is as bad clusters/sectors are usually physical damage to the disk surface/s. When you have bad sectors they often grow in number progressively and you should replace the disk or at least backup up a lot if you have them, as the disk will likely fail at some time soon or get an area corrupted you dont want, like a FAT table or data area. You can lose the lot if you arent careful!

Some people get lucky and the bad area doesnt grow and it works for years afterwards, but risking this should not happen if the PC is important or contains critical data.

The most common cause of bad sectors is an aging hard disk, as the Read/Write heads in the disk can dip and hit the disk surface, when normally they do not ever touch the disk/s. This happens because the head arms and mechanisms loosen and/or lose alignment. They wear out. The actual disk surfaces (there are multiple disks in a hard drive) are very durable and would last decades if the heads didnt wear out. But they do.

So do what i describe at the top about scanning and attempting repair on bad sectors, but also start backing up anything you dont want to lose, and do it more than ever, and if you can afford it, buy a new hard disk ASAP.

Thanks Dez Bradley

Hope this helps,

Jeremy

The Ultimate Boot CD (www.ultimatebootcd.com) includes most manufacturer's hard drive utilities.  You can try running the hd utility from the manufacturer of your hard drive, it may give a repair option.

In my experience once you start getting bad block or sector errors, the hard drive is on its way out.  Yes, you may be able to get the software to skip over that block, but the fact remains your hard drive is starting to fail.  Just replace it.  Don't wait for a catastrophic failure.

Did your Compaq come with any diagnostic CDs?  Sounds like the hard drive is going.

I'd get a new hard drive if it's still under warrantee.  There are lots of programs out there to help you recover data from an unbootable disk, but not much will repair bad blocks for long, if at all.  If you wait too long, I fear you will be looking for something to recover your data from an unbootable disk...

If you have a program such as Ghost, yes.