TCH-Thomas Posted March 31, 2004 Posted March 31, 2004 I bumped in to a computer today who had startup problems so i thought that reinstalling over the old one would do the trick. I didnt know what filesystem this computer used (it turned out to use NTFS) so i started the reinstall process and the computer told me it had either a damaged harddrive or the partition was full. All options i was given was to either format the whole harddrive or make a new partition. If using NTFS as filesystem, am i then not allowed to reinstall over an existing installation (to replace damaged files etc) without formatting? Quote
Madmanmcp Posted March 31, 2004 Posted March 31, 2004 Thomas, yes you can reinstall over the old. You have two possible reasons to look at which is what that message is telling you. You may have a bad hard drive OR the partition is full. When installing Windows the first check done is to see how much space is available, it needs room to copy its temporary files to the hard drive. If you are low on space you will get this message and the install will stop until you free up enough space to continue. Quote
TCH-Thomas Posted March 31, 2004 Author Posted March 31, 2004 Yes I understand all that but the thing is that this only had a few GB used of 40 GB so it should have had plenty of space to install on. Quote
Madmanmcp Posted March 31, 2004 Posted March 31, 2004 Well then I am sorry to say that narrowed things down to one possibility Quote
TCH-Thomas Posted March 31, 2004 Author Posted March 31, 2004 Yup. Anyone happen to know any good disc diagnostic programs etc to prevent disasters in future? Quote
Madmanmcp Posted March 31, 2004 Posted March 31, 2004 Anyone happen to know any good disc diagnostic programs etc to prevent disasters in future? That and a program to predict the winner in the horse races is all I'd need. Hardware failure is a part of the business, a good backup system is about the best you can do to "prevent disasters in future" as far as hard drives are concerned. Windows comes with SCANDISK. Nortons has Disk Doctor (but I've both fixed and distroyed drives with it) Gibson Research has Spinrite and there are many more Quote
MikeJ Posted March 31, 2004 Posted March 31, 2004 I bumped in to a computer today Well quit bumping those computers, Thomas! They don't like being bumped. Seriously though, occasional diskscans for corruption, and a good recent backup always on hand, is probably your best protection. Look into making rescue disks for your operating systems, too, in case it can't boot, but is a correctable problem. Most operatings systems (including Windows I believe) include the ability to create rescue disks to boot off of to diagnose booting problems. Quote
TCH-Thomas Posted March 31, 2004 Author Posted March 31, 2004 Ok, thanks guys And yes, I hereby promise i will not "bump" in to computers. Quote
TCH-Thomas Posted March 31, 2004 Author Posted March 31, 2004 Oh no, ive bumped in to one more problem or it could be that im tired (i dont know)... Scandisk, i dont find it neither in my computer or Jessicas. Both have xp. Is scandisk installed by default or do i have to add it afterwards? We did install Norton systemworks with disc doctor but it will not run. Quote
MikeJ Posted March 31, 2004 Posted March 31, 2004 In WinXP: Click Start and select My Computer Right click on the drive you want to scan and select Properties Click on the Tools tab Click on Check Now under Error-checking That's the Windows XP version of scandisk. Quote
Deverill Posted March 31, 2004 Posted March 31, 2004 If the data is critical then you can also throw a second hard drive in there and use one of the utils to do real time mirroring. Drive failures can occur in a moment so it's hard to predict failures... just be prepared for them when they happen. Quote
TCH-Thomas Posted April 1, 2004 Author Posted April 1, 2004 Thanks guys. I guess you cant tell I only had XP for a month, right? In ME scandisk was placed in startmenu...>accessories (or what you call it). Quote
TCH-Thomas Posted April 1, 2004 Author Posted April 1, 2004 Ok, computers harddrive formatted, splitted in to 2 parts and...WORKING!!! I made 2 partitions, my only problem now is that partition 2 got letter "e" instead of "d" as i thought it would be given automatically. Is there a way to change it so partition 2 becomes "d" and cd-drive becomes "e" and not the other way around? Quote
kevan_j Posted April 22, 2004 Posted April 22, 2004 To change drive letters.... Click Start...Right-Click My Computer and select Manage. In the Computer Management Application, select Disk Management (you may have to expand the 'Storage' category). If you right-click on CD/DVD drive, or disk partitions, a pop-up menu will contain a 'Change Drive Letter and Paths...' option. You may have to assign F: to the disk partition temporarily so you can re-assign E: to the CD drive, then re-assign d: to the disk partition. Quote
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