needaremedy

OK, I hope you guys can help me out here.

My pc caught a few viruses about 3 weeks ago, and I done a really bad job of getting rid of them. After a while my pc suddenely just locked up, and crashed to a blue screen full text, saying something like "windows had to shut down the computer to prevent further damage"

I turned it off and turned it back on, but when it got to the windows loading screen it changed back to the same blue screen, this time It read the same but also said "Unmountable boot volume"

It stayed like this for a while and it wouldn't get past this error, so I eventually decided to try and re format the pc.

I loaded my Windows XP cd into my drive, and booted it, I get to the screen asking me if I want to repair or continue a fresh install. I choose the fresh install option in hope of deleting all files on my hard drive and installing a fresh copy of windows on it.

But it then comes up with the error "Could not find Windows XP disk"

After that I tried again, this time choosing the option from the cd to "repair" and it took me to the recovery console. I typed in the command CHKDSK /R, but it came up with the an error reading something like this:
"Cannot complete function, hard drive is damaged and unrecoverable"

(BY the way, all the quotes and error messages i've typed above aren't 100% accurate as I'm typing them from memory but they're all similar

So I can't load up my pc, I can't run the Windows XP cd, and CHKDSK /R won't work.

I'm out of Ideas

I thought that the Hard drive may well be completely broke, so I was looking to buy a brand new hard drive.

The one i'm using right now is a Maxtor 610801 ( can't remember the exact number) and i'm pretty sure it's an ATA kind of hard drive.

If I was to buy another cheap ATA hard drive online and just replace the one I have right now with it, and then install windows xp on it, will that fix all my problems?

elf

Well the first thing to check would be your BIOS. Your harddrive should show up first in the POST (Power On Self Test) with the model #.

If you enter the BIOS (Basic Input Output System), usually by pressing delete during the POST, it should have more detailed information about your harddrive.

If your harddrive is not showing up in the POST or BIOS, I would first recommend checking all the cable connections to the harddrive. The cables you would be looking for are the ribbon cable and the power cable.

Check that and post back, if you have any questions don't hesitate to ask before digging around inside your PC.

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needaremedy

Hi I just checked my BIOS and the name of the hard drive is Maxtor 6L080L0.

If you don't know of a solution to my problem, can you suggest me a new hard drive I can buy that will be compatible with my pc?

JL_COG

you can run maxblast or powermax from maxtor for free and determine your drive's status. Here's one source:
http://www.majorgeeks.com/Maxtor_Powermax_d1386.html

needaremedy

Hi could you please tell me how to do this? I can't load up windows on my pc to download it. Could I just download it on another pc, load it on a cd, and boot the cd on the broken computer?