Hard drive failure

by **LeVar Burton** » Mon Apr 05, 2004 11:15 am

Well yesterday my computer slowed down to a snails pace while I was trying to enter a web address, so I shut everything down and rebooted. When I rebooted I got a disk read error. I ran some of the diagnostics and it failed alot of the IDE things. I swapped the hard drive out with an old one to see if that would work and it did go to the windows 98 that was installed on it and had several hardware conflicts which was to be expected. I put the messed up drive back in and still got a disk read error. Today I called Dell and when I started it up it went to windows like there was no problem. The guy wanted to run a diagnostic anyway and sure enough it said there was a disk read failure, which the guy seemed very suprised about like it never happens. So either tomorrow or the next day a guy is coming to replace the hard drive and I'm going to have to reinstall windows and everything else.

My question to you guys is are there any pitfalls that I need to be aware of when installing windows again? I have a backup of everything I really need, I'm more concerned about the process of installing windows from the BIOS or whatever. I also have to say as much as alot of you badmouth Dell, they've alot more helpful and cooperative than I ever expected. And to top it all off the guy wasn't in India either... go figure.

by **Ralph Wiggum** » Mon Apr 05, 2004 11:27 am

Are you using XP, it is pretty easy to install even for us liberal arts types. Also, why not make the Dell guy do it.

by **LeVar Burton** » Mon Apr 05, 2004 11:34 am

Yeah, I'm using XP. The guy on the phone was telling me which CD everything was on and what I was going to have to do like the technician wouldn't be able to help me. He also said something about how they weren't allowed to give advice about backing up data and whatnot. I will try to make the Dell guy do it though.

Its also funny you mention liberal arts because the other day I took a survey that was limited to liberal arts undergrads and they enter you to win a $1400 gift certificate to Dell. It took like 20 minutes and I couldn't imagine that many people did it or knew about it, so I got my fingers crossed...

by **Doyle Hargraves** » Mon Apr 05, 2004 11:38 am

Yeah its really not that complicated on xp. A dell guy walked me through it when I had to reinstall on Sir Loin's Porn/BF42 terminal.

by **Murgatroyd** » Mon Apr 05, 2004 11:41 am

be sure to tell the dell guy that you also expect him to reinstall your copies of photoshop and 3dstudio max which you have conveniently lost the CDs for..

by **LeVar Burton** » Mon Apr 05, 2004 11:41 am

HAHA... you know whats funny Doyle is your avatar looks kinda like you with a handlebar mustache.

by **Bagginses** » Mon Apr 05, 2004 11:47 am

Installing XP on your own isn't that difficult, it pretty much does it all itself.

-Bagginses

by **Bullhead** » Mon Apr 05, 2004 11:47 am

Levar, dells usually will give you a celan windows XP cd (unlike alot of OEM's that give you custom ones), so install is a breeze. You should be able to boot off of the cd, and it will launch the install process, just answer the questions and it'll go right through no sweat. As for drivers, dell usually gives you a cd with all of them on it, but it can be a bit of a pain to navigate through if you've never used it before and don't know what hardware you have inside. You may end up calling tech support to get through this part, but nothing to terrible.

What's critical, IMO, is that as soon as windows is up and running, and you've got all the drivers you need install, you immediately do the windows updates to get the security patches installed (or you risk immediate virus infection, thanks to the blaster virus STILL running around). As soon as those are done, make sure you get an AV program, and any firewall software you use, set up, so your pc is protected. Once this is done, you just reinstall your apps, copy back over any data you backed up, and you're good to go.

Ps. If you use outlook for email, make sure to export your messages to a file, and copy them off onto cd/fd before reinstalling (if you can get into windows).

by **LeVar Burton** » Mon Apr 05, 2004 11:50 am

Boisclair, you're a weird little shit and I don't get you!!!

by **Drews** » Mon Apr 05, 2004 12:17 pm

Not that this will help LeVar. But don't you love when you call for support and you know they are looking through the manual have less knowledge then you do. Then when they get stuck they put you on hold to talk to their supervisior. Then he tells them to tell you to format. The easy way out for them when they don't want to take the time to help you figure it out. Glad I have no one to call anymore, due to the fact I had to learn most on my own and build my own so no support.

Hard drive failure

Hard drive failure

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