probable hard drive failure

[frank1]

When my pc is booting it gets so far then restarts again with the blue screen and a message with lots of noughts and a 2 I think at the end. The hard drive itself is a few years old so I'm thinking we're all doomed, well I am. So I bought a new hard drive today.
Question is can I transfer all the data from the old drive including the OS. I know I copied the OS onto another drive awhile back and it worked. Though according to the guy that sold me the new drive I wouldn't be able to do that.
So your thoughts and suggestions for the software needed to do this.

[Scphoto]

Depends on the fault, Blue screen of Death on bootup doesn't mean the hdd is dead, it might be a corrupt driver for something. If you can boot into safe mode you should be able to save files. Even it it doesn't boot into safe mode there's a good chance files can be recovered.

[frank1]

The zeros a have a five at the end. I don't like the sound of the hard drive. I've got the new HDD so I may as well be safer than sorry. This only started happening when I un-installed SP3. My other post concerning my Wacom tablet will explain this. I used software from a free disc on a computer mag to copy the OS before. So a deep search of discs around the flat is required.
This is what I really want to know does anybody have an idea as to which software is the best to use to copy the OS onto the new drive

[Wheelman]

I think if it were me I would install a new clean version to the new HDD. I assume you have the original CD.

Copying the OS from a dodgy drive means that any corrupted OS file or driver will be copied to the new drive.

The only thing to watch out for is if any of your software requires a key.

I have had to re-install my XP pro machine and to do this I needed to "park" the software licence key for my CAD program on the suppliers site and then load it back onto the "new" drive.

You will probably also have to re-activate it which may or may not work online as the hardware has changed.

[pachinkofan]

google the 0x error code that comes up, to see if it's hardware or software/OS related, so at least you'll know if the system is at fault or machinery.

As for copying across, see the website for the new hard drive manufacturer, 80% of them have an app to do this, or see download.com [assuming you have more than just access to internet and can download etc]

G>

[gizmo001i]

Hi,
This is what I would do in your situation. First of all try to boot your machine into safe mode by holding the F8 key whilst the computer boots. Hopefully you will be able to do this as it will make things alot simpler. Once you are in safe mode, have a look to see if you have any documents , photo's or files that you want to keep that are stored in "My Documents". If you do have any, then, move them all out of "My Documents" and place them in a new file on the hard drive (Drive C away from the "My Documents" folder. The reason, I say to do this, is that any files in "My Documents" will be protected by windows and can be a real pain in the proverbial when it comes to copying them to another drive (as you have to change the share options of each and every folder to be able to copy them).
Once you have done this, shutdown your computer, take out the old drive and replace it with the new drive. Install windows onto the new drive and check that everything is working properly. Then put your old drive back in as a slave and reboot Windows (using the new drive). Once Windows has started, you should hopefully be able to find the old drive on your computer. Go to the new folder that you created and copy all your files that you moved, to the new drive and hopefully that should be you sorted.
If however, your computer won't boot up in Safe Mode, then you will have no option other than to install windows onto thenew drive and then refit the old drive and move any files from "My Documents" (from the old drive) directly to the new drive. However, you will find that you will get the message "You'll need to provide administrator permission to copy to this file." This happens because the files in my documents on the old drive are owned by the user account of the old windows installation and are security protected. The only way to copy the files then is to do the following to each and every file:
Right click the folder, choose properties. Click
on the security tab, then on advanced. Go to the ownership tab and click edit. Locate your current account name or type it in and select it. Check the box to allow this to propagate to all subfolders and containers, then click apply/ok. It may take some time to run through, but afterwards you will be able to access the folder and the files in it.

This is a real pain as it takes time to do and doesn't always work, which is why I said at the beginning to try and move all your wanted files out of "My Documents". Once out of "My documents" the files will no longer be protected. Hopefully this does make sense and will also be useful to you.
Ian

[Wheelman]

Another trick if your files are in My documents and protected is to use the windows backup program. (Accessories-System Tools-Backup)

You simply back up the my documents and settings directory and then restore it to a different location having checked/unchecked the box that says retain security settings or something similar (can'r remember exactly!)

You might need to fiddle around to get it to save where you want but it does transfer all the files in one go.

[Kamepa]

You could have just booted up any live CD Linux distro and used gparted to check the hard drive and fix any errors. You can also recover your data if the OS is failing to boot before doing a reinstall - but I see you have already done that

[frank1]

As it was suggested I googed 0xc0000005 and a number of things came up. One being a SP2 issue and has I got rid of SP3. I can reasonably surmise that this may be the problem. I've installed an update and so far things are good.
All I have to do now is get the sata drive to work.
So thanks for your replies and help as always much appreciated

[IvorETower]

I have used Paragon software given out free on a magazine cover disk some months ago to upgrade a hard drive ffrom 40 to 500GB. The package is not that expensive to purchase, but you do need a fully working PC on whish to install it initially.
HTH

[jamesbrown]

This is really a great discussion. I have got the same problem with my system. Thanks for all the members to explain each things very clearly.