Club CDFreaks - Knowledge is Power - View Single Post - Having problems with a bad sector on my hard drive that will not let windows XP boot?

Dilapidated · 09-09-2005

In the year and a half since I built my computer it has run flawlessly. I have made it a habit of keeping all drivers and Windows XP pro up to date. My problems started when I installed an additional DVD Burner and in doing so my computer will not boot into Windows XP. It will go to the windows start up screen but once the loading bar stops and normally boots to the desktop screen, my monitor goes blank and says 'off in 5 seconds', then reboots. I took out the added DVD drive and set every thing back to the way it was but the problem still persists, it will not boot into safe mode or go back to the last known good config.

The Hard Drive I am using is a Seagate Serial ATA 120 G., I went to Segates web site and downloaded/ran the diagnostic tool that was provided to see if there could be anything wrong with the drive. It came up with one bad sector LBA:, ( \windows\app patch\ ). It asked if I wanted to replace the bad sector with zeros and I pressed ok. I thought that might help but it will not even pull up the Windows XP screen now.

I would appreciate any expert advice on what could be done to fix this problem so I can retrieve the 85% of data that this disc holds, Thank you.

09-09-2005	#1 (permalink)
Dilapidated New on Forum Join Date: May 2005 Posts: 18	Having problems with a bad sector on my hard drive that will not let windows XP boot? In the year and a half since I built my computer it has run flawlessly. I have made it a habit of keeping all drivers and Windows XP pro up to date. My problems started when I installed an additional DVD Burner and in doing so my computer will not boot into Windows XP. It will go to the windows start up screen but once the loading bar stops and normally boots to the desktop screen, my monitor goes blank and says 'off in 5 seconds', then reboots. I took out the added DVD drive and set every thing back to the way it was but the problem still persists, it will not boot into safe mode or go back to the last known good config. The Hard Drive I am using is a Seagate Serial ATA 120 G., I went to Segates web site and downloaded/ran the diagnostic tool that was provided to see if there could be anything wrong with the drive. It came up with one bad sector LBA:, ( \windows\app patch\ ). It asked if I wanted to replace the bad sector with zeros and I pressed ok. I thought that might help but it will not even pull up the Windows XP screen now. I would appreciate any expert advice on what could be done to fix this problem so I can retrieve the 85% of data that this disc holds, Thank you.