Emergency. Please Help Quick

[Muad'Dib]

Here's the deal. I'm trying to help my dad set up his old computer because we need to print some invoices, but his main system doesn't accept his printer. I don't know why. So the other day we set up the old p1 75 mhz HP system and it was "working" just fine. Suddenly, it stopped. I tried booting from the "recovery cd" after I set up the bios to boot from cd. RECOVERY MY A$$!!! The error I recieve is something along the lines that drive c: cannot be initialized.... I pushed retry and I was told that it cannot find vkd??? and that the registry is missing.... This I imagine is not a good thing. Please help me fix this crap. Reinstalling winblows is not an option.

Thanks,

Dimitri

[Brian R.]

You may try running Norton Disk Doctor and see if that can fix the drive. Other options are other disk-fix utilities.

[Muad'Dib]

Yeah, but how can I run them if the computer doesn't recognize the hard drive?

[Alegria]

This does not sound good at all. If the hard drive is physically damaged even so called disk fix utilities won't do any good. Does the computer recognize the drive's parameters? If it does,it is a better solution to put in another hdd that is about the same size or at least a size your HPs bios can handle and use some data recovery utility like TIRAMISU or EZRecovery from Ontrack according to the file system you used on the defective drive. Even if you can't access the drive at all it still can recover the intact data. You won't be able to get the system back running if your old drive is really damaged that bad as it seems.
The programs I mentioned aren't exactly cheap but if the data is worth it the cost does not matter that much.

Regards, Alegria

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The pump don't work, 'cause the vandals took the handle...
Bob Dylan

[Brian R.]

You run the utilities off of the emergency floppy disc.

[Thundrchez]

This does not sound good. I would guess that either the hard disk died or the ide controller died. Can you try putting that hard disk in another computer? Make sure that Windows doesn't bootup or it will have a major cow at seeing a whole new computer.

[Muad'Dib]

Thanks for all the suggestions. I've decided though that it isn't worth fixing. I'm selling it by the pound at the local "Liquidation Center"... the JUNKYARD. Oh well. It offered it's entertainment in the past. A moment of silence... Nah, SCREW it.

Thanks

Dimitri

[SCompRacer]

I had a friend bring me his PC where the hard drive was not recognized and all it turned out to be the MB battery was weak, BIOS forgot it had a hard drive is all.

May or may not be a possibility.

[Jorden]

Another option would be to go to the site of the hdd manufacterer and download the disk utilities they have, to check if the hdd is damaged, or that it just broke down...

Jorden.