Need help again... now restoring my hard drive

[Lefta Dissenter]

windows 98. I know I've done this before on the same computer and the same restore disks, so d'oh, what am I doing wrong?

I finally finished copying the crap I needed off of the computer, and then followed the restore disk instructions to insert disk, and then restart the computer.

Did that, and 'enter'ed to accept all of the warnings about deleting files, etc. Then it said that it was restoring, and the drive whirred and whirred.

Then there was the message something like 'couldn't access 'p' drive.' 'abort, retry, quit (whatever),' so I said retry, and it whirred along. the only thing showing on my screen now is the blue screen with the compaq quickrestore - and it seems to have stalled out. It hasn't asked for disk 2, and it's been sitting there for about 20 minutes like this. The drive stopped whirring about 12 minutes ago.

Should I just shut off the computer and try again? Should I try inserting disk 2? Should I throw the computer out the window? Should this be taking this long?????

HELP!!! THANKS! :yourock:

[footinmouth]

1. Not sounding too good

Sorry, I was able to help with the mail yesterday, but I can't do this one. I wonder if your hard drive is toast? Good luck.

[miss_kitty]

2. are you doing a total reformat or a repair install?

if a reformat, did you write 0s to the drive? Do you 'hit any key to continue' when prompted? I know on last Christmas I did that and had to start all over again, because there is a bad prompt, but that's XP. However, I wouldn't expect 98 to be any better than this.
Good Luck.

[BlueJazz]

3. do you have a boot floppy handy (floppy disk for "A" Drive)

If not, and you have access to the internet, you can make one...just search for "Boot Disk"

After that you can format you drive ....after you format, type this: fdisk /mbr ....(clears your Master Boot Record)

[CBGLuthier]

4. New hard drive or old

If it is not a new hard drive, go to maxtor.com and find the powermax download.

This will create a boot floppy that will run a test on the hard drive and tell you if it is failing. I use it all the time, in fact am running it right now on a machine. Does not matter if it is a maxtor drive or not.