D*#@ Windows!
 

Just came in from a business trip. Sat down at my home desktop PC and saw "Avast Antivirus needs to restart your operating system". Ok - I've got 5 minutes to waste, so I click "OK". The system cycles and the Windows loading screen comes up with the little squares tripping across the screen for 10 seconds and then the screen goes black and the machine reboots again!

I've been at this for two hours now(so much for 5 minutes) and I'm typing this on my employers laptop. The install CD doesn't give me the "Repair" option and bootcfg /repair hasn't gotten me anywhere either. Running chkdsk right now, but I don't have high hopes for it. I figure something in the Avast update screwed boot.ini - may have to edit that manually next...

I'm ready to dump the Windoze OS and go for ubuntu...:banghead:

Lovely - chkdsk found "unrecoverable errors". Looks like I'll be picking up a hard drive tomorrow...

Looks like you should be stopping by the Apple store tomorrow. But sorry to hear that. Will you be able to get data (hopefully not corrupted) off the disk?










:takecover



:D

so it was your HD that went bad? yikes, that blows...

Interesting how people can blame Windows for a hard drive failure and then imply that buying a Mac is the solution to said hard drive failure. :confused:
That's like blaming BMW when you hear a song you don't like on the car radio and then deciding that buying a MB will fix it.;)

It dosen't seem like it is solely a HD failure (correct me if I'm wrong) it seems like corruption with Windows and Avast. Then again, when my HD went sour, I didn't have any problems with my Mac. may have just been luck.

It takes some serious programming skills to kill a hard drive with software (can't be done).

Diogenes: The unrecoverable errors are likely due to damaged sectors occuring where critical OS data lives. Plain bad luck. Mount the old drive on another computer and try to copy as much personal files as possible. Then reformat to mark the bad sectors and perhaps the drive is still usable, though having failed once you might be better off with a new one anyway. Good luck!

That's my tho'ts - I've got an empty HD USB enclosure in the closet. I'll just mount the old HD in it after I reinstall the OS in a new drive. Then copy the old data over. Good thing is that there's not much data on the primary, just app's.

I originally blamed windows because of the Avast update. I'm not real surprised by the HD failure as it's a four year old Seagate Barracuda and an identical one in my wife's desktop died 'bout 6 months ago. Funny thing is, the secondary drive in the computer is the old primary from when I upgraded to XP. It's a six year old WD that just keeps on going.

Note to self - time to burn some backup DVDs after the OS reinstall...

Psss, there are other alternatives to Windows and Mac. Drive failure, that would kill any platform :)

You CAN do a repair! Put the CD in, then go to install windows. Click on your existing installation. It will give you a warning, would you like to do a system restore? Then, click yes. It is hidden in the CD. Hope this help!