Crashed on Windows update

[Bluto]

Hello all...

I have an XP (home) system. It's a clutter-free, clean system. I update the firewall (ZA), antivirus (AVG) and spy/scumware aps I use, on a very regular basis. I almost never have troubles with viruses, and other nasties from the net.

However, last night I did the windows update. Had to restart the computer afterward, and after doing so I'm getting a hard disk failure message. I've not had any trouble with it up to this point either so I don't know why it's taken a dump so suddenly.

I can get to DOS, and I can get to the BIOS, but that appears to be about all I can do.

Anyone ever run into this before? Is there some fix for this?

Anyone have a suggestion....ideas? <sigh>

p.s. During one reboot I did see a message about running scanreg and a something corrupt in the registry. Where's scanreg so I can find it in DOS and would it help if I reloaded the registry? Doesn't Windows keep like 5 copies of the registry? But I don't know where they are or how to reload them.

 

[rudder]

do a repair install. This will basically put back all the original files and leave all installed programs intact.

 

[deathwalker]

Originally posted by: rudder
do a repair install. This will basically put back all the original files and leave all installed programs intact.

I support this approach if you can't do a F8 start and try to start with the last known good configuration. A repair reinstall can fix a multitude of OS corruption problems.

 

[Bluto]

Ok...will give it a go.

Thanks for the suggestions!

 

[RebateMonger]

If I suddenly started getting Hard Drive Failure messages, I'd make sure that I got copies of any important files off that hard drive. The same applies to doing a "Repair Install" of XP. Better safe than sorry.

If you do a Repair Install, and if you have a hard drive larger than 137GB, then be sure that you use an XP Install CD that contains integrated SP1 or SP2 patches. I'm not exactly sure what will happen if you install XP RTM on a pre-formatted 200GB hard drive partition, but it can't be the safest thing to do.

You can't do an "F8" when you first boot? If you could, you'd have a lot more options (like System Restore, which would likely fix your Registry problem without the need for a re-install). That's assuming that you don't have a "real" hard drive failure...which you MIGHT....