Yes. The best one can hope for with a failing/failed hard drive is that it
will spin up and run long enough so that important DATA files can be copied from
it onto a replacement hard drive which has been set up with the right operating
system. As a rule, one forget any possibility of getting copies of installed
software from a failing hard drive, because the software installation puts lots
and lots of entries into the Windows registry and splatters program files and
DLLs all over the hard drive... Ben Myers

On Mon, 06 Nov 2006 07:55:11 -0600, Bob I wrote:

Failing harddrives don't "revive". If you have physical failure, and you
are attempting to install to it, you are wasting your time. They don't
heal.

wrote:

wrote:


Your hard drive is dead. Although you can try reseating it. My money's
on dead. Your CDROM probably died some time ago, or your CD media is
damaged/dirty. You can try cleaning the lens of the CD drive with
alcohol and a cotton swab. It's old enough, the leans may just be
dirty.

Your laptop is 8-11 years old. Drives fail.


The hard drive is old and failing but I would want to try revive it. It
has worked for many years until it was upgraded to windows 2000 Pro
then only a few days later it will boot up halfway into windows and
then hangs.

I have a startup disk for windows 98 and boot disk for windows 2000 and
both have failed to open into the command prompt. I've have had
windows 2000 hang like this before on a brand new hard drive and it
turns out the solution is to load the startup disk and run chkdsk. How
do I run chkdsk?

Thanks