Hard drive/install problem

Oh man! Ad-blocking software has been detected! :'(

This website is run by the community, for the community... and it needs advertisements in order to keep running. Blocking our ads means your killing our stats!
Please disable your ad-block, or become a premium member to hide all advertisements and this notice.

Hi guys,

Just got back from the Nag's head as I was asked to look at a XP machine.
User reports of randomly not starting and eventually won't.
It wouldn't start in last known good but did in safe mode.
As it seems to be generally in the need of a re-install I got all the data off it and planned to do a wipe- or that is what I thought.
If I boot from the CD and try to install that way it goes all the way through copying the set-up files and then gives a BSOD of:

STOP: C0000221 Unknown hard error\systemroot\system32\ntdll.dll

Went to MS and found that the named file is corrupt.
I thought OK If I removed SP2 I can re-install from the desktop (the disk is older than SP2). The problem is the user wants a bigger partition than Windows is currently on! As you are thinking It won't let me delete the partition Windows is currently on!

What I need to do is wipe the entire drive and then boot to CD and install windows that way so i can create a partition for Windows and another or maybe 2 for data.

 

Oh man! Ad-blocking software has been detected! :'(

This website is run by the community, for the community... and it needs advertisements in order to keep running. Blocking our ads means your killing our stats!
Please disable your ad-block, or become a premium member to hide all advertisements and this notice.

It doesn't sound like you are asking a question, Boyce. Sounds like you've made the decision to wipe the drive and do a reinstall. That being the case, I kind of like killdisk:

http://www.killdisk.com/

 

Thanks Trip.
In all honesty do you think there is much point in trying to repair his current version? It has been generally cluttered up over 3 years and all the data has been recovered.
With regards to Kill disk Is it just a matter of making a MS-DOS boot disk (right click A drive in my computer and select create a MS-DOS start-up)`and adding the kill disk exe to it and restarting the PC?
To save time could I add it to a 98 start-up disk and do it that way? How long do you think it will take to wipe a 200GB drive?

 

Boyce, if you select the option on Trip's link to download the free version, you'll see you can download a bootable disk creator that will create the floppy for you. I know, cos I just did it (thanks Trip )

EDIT: http://www.killdisk.com/downloadfree.htm#Booting_from_Floppy_Disk

Direct link

 

You're welcome. I'm just passing along something that was given to me once upon a time.

 

Id personally recommend wiping and starting again. My last install was about 1.5 - 2 years old since the last clean start. It gets incredibly clogged up, with programs being installed and uninstalled then reinstalled, etc.

If you start again it sorts it all out, and you boot a LOT faster.

Fergal

 

You reminded me of something you yourself posted a while back, Fergal - emptying the prefetch folder.

Your post HERE

 

Thanks both. Will make a bootable CD and Nuke it tommorow.
Any idea how long it would take to do a 200GB drive?

 

Has that been added to the library? If not it should be.

 

I recently formatted a friend's 130 Gb HDD and it took over an hour (using the XP disk, that is). I've no idea how long killdisk would take, but to fulfill the secure wiping of data that it claims on a drive that size, I'd hazard a wild guess you may be looking at easily 1-2 hours ?

Would be interesting to find out - if you go with this, please let us know, Boyce.

 

Killdisk is pretty fast but then I've only used it on smaller HDDs. There's a version called Killdisk Pro that supposedly does a fantastic job of wiping a drive, going over it 10 to 20 times, but a disk of any significant size (200 GB neighborhood) would take 20 to 40 hours to wipe. I don't think the freeware version is quite that complete.

 

Ah yes, the prefetch! It is quite good for dropping the boot time (sometimes by quite a bit), but it IS a double edged sword.

On the one hand, faster boot time, on the other, longer program load time.

Fergal

 

IMHO, the benefits outweigh the overheads, as all too often you'll see in Task Manager programs that you know you wont use that often, but are still partially loaded at least.

 

Personally i agree Gav. But its always something to consider i suppose.

 

If I can ask, what do you need a secure wipe for Boyce? If you don't need one, then just boot off the XP CD, delete all the existing partitions, then do an NTFS quick format. Or does this program provide advanced partition management also?

 

Modey,

The user doesn't require a "secure wipe".
The problem is that it hangs on the install part when booting from the CD.
Although If i remove SP2 from the machine and install from the current desktop it will not let you delete the partition that Windows is currently on. To do this you need to boot from the CD which is what I can't do.
This normally wouldn't be a problem but the user wants a bigger partition for Windows that it currently is.

 

Gav,
Just to let you know it is about half way now (5 hours)

 

So I was optimistic ?