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View Full Version : Fresh win xp install damaged?


IceWilly
03-29-04, 08:20 PM
** i was not sure where to post this, so its also in the MS OS forum **

Heres my problem. Its a little long but i really need some advice. This girl at my college downloaded some viruses and badly messed up here computer. I was helping her out and wiped the HDD clean and proceeded to reinstall windows Xp home. Right after i installed it, it was running really slow... I rebooted from the windows xp disc and it said that the install was damaged. How can this be after i just installed it.

I tried reinstalling a couple more times with my windows xp cd and another copy of windows xp pro that i have. I still got the damaged install message. THEN i was reinstalling it again and got some error mid install saying it was missing a file or something. And that it might be a problem with the cd. I just used these cds to reinstall windows on my own computer last week so thats not the problem.

What could be going wrong? I am at a loss. The only solution i can think of is that the harddrive is corrupted or bad now, and that i would have this girl replace it. But again i don't want to tell her to buy a new harddrive and run into the same problem again. Plz give me some advice asap so i can get her up and running soon. Thanks alot.

*Also, i have no way to run diagnostics on this harddrive unless i can do it without any kind of OS. I also cannot put it into my computer to test it either. thanks for any help...

Ice

ptwearnhardtfan
03-29-04, 08:25 PM
You should be able to run the hard drive manufacturers diagnostics from a floppy. You shouldn't need and OS installed to run it.

diehrd
03-29-04, 08:30 PM
Use a 9x boot disk and run scandisk on it.Or get a utility disk from the drive makers site.Also just because you are down, run MemTest on it..

Format the master boot record format/mbr you may have a corruption from a virus in it.

Also can you clean the disks and the opticle drive ? Dust can cause grief