Dodgy HDD

[Stockholm1984]

Have been messing around with my girlfriend's laptop recently, mainly cause it's so knackered it doesn't matter what I do to it. I tried formatting the whole thing and re-installing the OS to start from scratch but just over half way through the thing froze up. I tried it several times and every time it froze at the same point. Now I have no idea what could cause the system to not format except that maybe there's something wrong with the drive. Anyone have any ideas?

[Quakken]

I would download a linux distro and see if you can put that on it. If that doesn't work, you could always get a new hard drive from newegg and open it up and put that in it.

[SgtM]

Make sure you've cleaned the HDD real good. I recomment dban for that.
http://dban.sourceforge.net

****WARNING****
DBAN will completely destroy ANY and ALL data on ANY and ALL hard drives that it finds. It's an equal opportunity data destroyer.

[Drum Thumper]

What kind of surface did you have the laptop on when you tried to reinstall?

Sounds like it overheated.

[.Maleficus.]

Make sure you've cleaned the HDD real good. I recomment dban for that.
http://dban.sourceforge.net

****WARNING****
DBAN will completely destroy ANY and ALL data on ANY and ALL hard drives that it finds. It's an equal opportunity data destroyer.
+rep for that link SgtM. I'll definitely use that next time I reformat and reinstall an OS.

[xmastree]

Grab a copy of the ultimate boot CD (http://www.ultimatebootcd.com) and test the disk if you suspect it.

[Stockholm1984]

Don't think it was an overheat was on a desk and did complete a 'Quick Format' though that wasn't deep enough to wipe the key problems off. Thanks for the links to the hardcore drive destroyers there will give that a go not like it could screw it up anymore than it is already! :) I didn't think the OS could get messed up enough that it wasn't possible to wipe it off the drive.

[XcOM]

it proberly wasn't too screwed up,

it was more than likly you got some bad sectors on the hard drive that caused both the OS screwup and the reinstall failure, i recommend a full uncndisional format, if you got a linux distro around use that, if not use indows xp setup and peform a full NTFS format, or failing that us the UBCD as mentioned above.

[Luke122]

I agree with Xcom.. do a full format rather than a quick format. :)

[Killdrath]

Thirded.

Dban rocks. I used that once to do a full wipe of a clients computer (client was a bank)

But definately, I'd even go so far as to, in windows setup, delete the partition, re-create it, and do the full format as suggested. If it still fails, yeah, get one of those boot CD's and do a full disk scan.

[XcOM]

i have a lovly program, the MOD use it, its the only true MOD certified disk wiper,

I use it personally when i reinstall my system, it wipes it 7 times, durng the process if it finds an bad sectors it will blank them, and re-edit the firmware/board controller so the sectors are not even seen, they don't know they even exist, it skips them.

Very sefl for recovering hard drives that are nackered.