I'm not going to bother you with the whole soap opera that is my latest computer problem, I'm just going to state the facts here:

- I cannot boot to my 120 GB F drive. It had Windows XP on it, and was made by Western Digital. It worked fine for about eight months, but this past week it would give me occasional "Unknown Hard ERROR" reports and now won't even get to the Windows XP screen.

- I attempted to reinstall Windows XP when all other things failed. (Floppy drive doesn't work any longer, recovery CD was using an "unsupported file SYSTEM".) Windows XP did not let me install on the F: drive.

- I attempted to install Mandrakelinux on my F: drive. It gave me a much more specific error: it could not access the partition file.

- I am currently working on my 2 year old 40GB C: drive with Mandrakelinux installed using the same IDE cable and experience no problems, beyond how hard it is to install stuff.... (Grumble, grumble.)

- As I had said, my floppy drive does not work - it won't recognize that there is a floppy disk in it, so I could not run the diagnostic utility provided by Western Digital.

Is there anything I can do to fix this drive? I would be extremely disappointed to lose it: it cost $70 and has 120GBs of space...

Thanks in advance.
Edit/Delete Messagetry re-booting and hit the f8 key keep TAPPING it and chose the LAST good config..it may work?>http://support.microsoft.com/?kbid=314474  what make is this pcNothing.

Make is XP Home Edition. (For that drive)Is this PC provided with a real Windows XP disk or just a (HP, Compaq, eMachines, Dell, etc.) stupid recovery disk? You should be able to mount the 120GB as primary SINGLE, boot to the XP CD (set your BIOS so the CDROM is the first boot drive), and reformat and load XP to the 120G (111 actual GB) hard drive.

WD should provide a CD copy of Data Lifeguard Tools you can run to test the drive. The website may have it on ISO, or you can get a buddy to copy your floppy to a 650MB or 190MB CD...I do have an XP installation CD. When I tried to install it the first time, it refused to partition it. When I tried a second time, it didn't even show up on the list.