hi guys i am in NEED of some serious help i DONT know what to do.
i have aqquired a compaq presario s6289uk computer from a friend
the hard drive went down so now i have it
it is 2 years old with a 2.6ghz p4 and previously ran Xp when trying to install Xp it freezes on the FORMAT screen. so i formatted on another pc to bypass this operation then when it has copied the files needed for setup and reboots it says disk read ERROR i have tried this with several drives but still the same result??
when i inserted a drive with xp preloaded it goes to the start noramlly / last known good screen. if i select either it just restarts i am officially puzzeled
please please helpmuch appreciated
cheers matt
When you say "it freezes on the format screen" - how long did you leave it? Because formatting can take a long time (hours, even) on some hard drives. Did you remove the existing partition first? (That would be a good idea.)Hi rob THANKS for the tips i now have it up and running it i tried hard drive diagnostics and found that it had a problem right at the end on 99% on another pc so installed fine on another drive and all is well at the moment but i am using the other as a slave will this be ok
cheers simshi
You might get away with it. One caveat: you are putting your data at risk, placing files on a suspect hard drive. Take regular backups.