URGENT HELP NEEDED -possible bad hard drive (XP) and windows 7

Check the hard drive with the manufacturer's diagnostic tools.
Hard Drive Diagnostics Tools and Utilities (Storage) - TACKtech Corp.

Not sounding good for recovery.

is the drive formatted with ntfs, and does xp read that file system?

Pusspa said:

is the drive formatted with ntfs, and does xp read that file system?

The HD has Win XP installed from OP's Notebook, have a look at post 1.

dammit these 3 kids of mine (all under 3.5 years) they're driving me NUTS. Dont they know how important it is to be able to read from a disk in order to retrieve some stupid files...!!!...lol

i need to go have a beer and chill out, wait for the wife to get home from work before I can re-try.

Thanks again i will report back

sdmfer said:

dammit these 3 kids of mine (all under 3.5 years) they're driving me NUTS. Dont they know how important it is to be able to read from a disk in order to retrieve some stupid files...!!!...lol

i need to go have a beer and chill out, wait for the wife to get home from work before I can re-try.

Thanks again i will report back

Well, wait to have grand kids aswell.:):)

You'll need to put the HD back in the laptop to run maker's HD diag/repair CD scan as they won't run on externals. But if the HD can be saved then that is your best shot as I have salvaged many HD's using that together with chkdsk.

As you might be having problems with command line, try running chkdsk by rightlicking the external>Properties>Tools>Error checking>tick both boxes.