The consensus of opinion is that my laptop HD is screwed. Can't read it with a USB caddy. I am sure that some one out there could sort it at more than the price for a new one so stuff that.
Now can I just buy a new HD, bung it in and reload windows?
Dunno what happened. Can't boot past safe mode screen and even then can't select anything. Tried Hd in caddy but got can't read message. Prepared to start all over again if it get the laptop running. Can I take the opportunity to boost HD. eg from 40gb to 80? Was runningxp so planning on doing the same unless I am recommended to do something else.
7 would be nice but no big deal
Have you tried booting with the windows disk in the DVD drive? (and making sure that your PC is set to look at the DVD drive before the HDD).
No problems with increasing HDD size.
Ig you can get it to boot at all the the HD is not dead. You should be able to recover data from it and possibly even reload windows onto it. Sometimes something like a fdisk /mbr command from the installation disk recovery option is enough. (Think it is fix mbr nowadays). Anyway I don't think all is lost.
It might be stuffed anyway if there are bad sectors in the master boot record, but should be able to recover some data off it (just managed it for a friend).
Can you no longer re-write MBR's then? I have been out of the game for sometime I admit.
I think you can, but there's a difference between a hardware broken bit and a software one. Not sure how Windows appreciates bad bits in its boot sector.
From recent experience with a very unhappy windows, which wouldn't boot off a recovery dvd even after the partition had been Shredded by Linux (intentionally).