computer problem

[tw]

Originally Posted by jinx

I think Im too retarded to do this but I really appreciate your help.

The programs that typical solve that were fixboot, fixmbr, etc. I was under the impression fdisk had long been discontinued - moved to the recovery console.

Much of what you just went through would be solved (learned) immediately by the diagnostic. And again, it has at least three sources - on the hard drive, on a CD-Rom, and from the manufacturer web site. If it does not exist, well, you now appreciate why I only recommend computer that provide those diagnostics.

Going back on what you learned. First, BIOS often only be entered from a cold reboot (not from Cntrl-Alt-Del).

Bios then talks to and reads the disk drive computer. In your case the 320 Mb and other disk drive serial numbers, etc. After that, a diagnostic would move on to confirming disk drive computer can actually read all sectors on the disk and other important points.

Once that is done, then boot the machine from another completely different CD - your Windows boot CD. One that is something called a Recovery Console that contains the 'fix windows software on the disk' programs. Either you boot windows or your boot the Recovery Console that contains Fixboot, FixMbr, Bootcfg and other programs.
Details are provided in:
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/307654


Meanwhile, appreciate why I prefer companies that provide those comprehensive hardware diagnostics including Dell and HP. It makes problems so massively easier to understand. In your case, the diagnostics would have immediately said which disk drives actually existed - and not confused the help who assumed the drive had failed.