Hard drive gone?

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Hi,

Some people might have seen my post a few days ago. I looked at a XP based machine where the user was complaining of random non starts. On arrival it wouldn't start nomally or in last known good.
Luckily, it started in Safe mode and I recovered all the data of it.
As it was in need of a re-install anyhow (3 years of general clutter) the user agreed to it.
I booted to the XP CD and it got most of the way through but then hung on a BSOD with STOP: c0000221 unknown hard error
\systemroot\system32\ntdll.dll
Went to MS knowledge base and they advise to replace the offending file. Because it was a re-install I didn't bother.
If it wasn't for the fact that the owner wanted a bigger partition than Windows was currently on I would have installed from the desktop.
I used Killdisk to wipe the drive and was hoping for a nice straight forward install. I have got the same problem after. The BIOS recognises that the drive is a Maxotr 200Gb but set-up can only see 130GB!
Is it safe to say the hard drive has had it?

 

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http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;Q314474

According to MS, you might have a bad drive...but "hardware" is such a vague term. I had blue screen problems with my Dell Inspiron 8200 laptop loaded with Windows XP Pro. Turns out it was a motherboard issue and the mobo had to be replaced (HDD was fine). Just a thought.

 

Thanks Trip. I did look at this article the other night.
Surely the hard drive has gone as there won't be any files left after kill disk has formatted it and the other thing is the BIOS correctly identifies a Maxtor 200GB drive in auto detect

 

Just to let you know it was a faulty XP disc. I took my personal disk around and it can see all 200GB!
The user will have to ask microsoft for another.