System Crash

[kfh]

Hi All,

My brothers laptop crashed on him, he knows very little about comps. He tried to install a win 98 game on an xp comp Hmm! Here's the situ he restarted his machine to find a missing dll problem not sure which dll 'not much help there'.
I told him to restart with his xp cd in he got as far as the quick format option which he did, but got an error saying disk corrupted.
I've got the laptop now first attempt I got as far as it was installing folders then it stopped saying it cannot create a folder.
Second attempt got to the 34 mins section you guessed it hung for an hour. Third attempt I got as far as saving settings 9 mins to go it hung there for 2 hours.
Now I am at he corrupted disk part. I tried to format the disk this hangs at 0% forever, I've tried Pauls Suggestion Bootit NG it tries to scan surface but hangs there to.
Is it time to give up and get a new HD? If so would this be a shop repair or is it possible for me to do?

Thanks,
kfh.

[jlreich]

It does sound like the HDD is bad. Have you tried running the HDD manufacturers diagnostics on it?

Most laptop hard drives are pretty easy to replace and will take a standard laptop hard drive. You will probably have to transfer over a bracket or tray and possibly an adapter for the connection. But that's no big deal.

What make/model is the laptop?

[kfh]

Hi jlreich,

System is up and running, managed to do a complete wipe it took six hours though. Os reinstalled ok just had to run chkdsk a few time when rebooting.

Thanks

kfh.

[jlreich]

had to run chkdsk a few time when rebooting.
Sounds like the drive is dying. ;)