I'm not sure where to start. Novice to posting & making changes in my computer I usually leave my 2 yr. store built computer on, I shutdown properly, tried to restart next day, but would not load into windows. May have picked up a virus and or, my hard drive is crashing. I tried to start in safe mode, but all I got was black screen with flashing cursor. I can get into bios but not sure what to do. I can get into Dos and type C:dir and see entries. I have norton and tried my rescue diskettes, the anti virus didn't want to work, said it needed files that were not on the disk. The basic rescue disk implies, cmos information, boot records, partition tables are ok, this means nothing to me. Disk doctor said something about the c: drive not being configured right (I think that was the word), so it could do nothing. Win98 start up disk is probably how I got scan disk running, and it is telling me I have bad clusters. 1,256,025 clusters total 1,033,363, examined. 302 found bad and still counting. Scan disks examines a cluster, asks if I want to fix it, moves the cluster and moves on. Then I have to hit enter, this is taking hours so I taped down the enter key and it progresses. Is this really doing anything? Should I let scan disk keep running, at this rate it will take another day and a half, or stop it and try something else (place your Ideas here). Scan disk is the only thing that seems to do anything. There is nothing real vital on my hard drive just things I would like to retrieve.

If scandisk appears to be working and doing it's thing then I would let it complete it's tasks. If you get no positive result after completion post another message with any errors you are receiving. M NB. This is only what I would do, whilst running scandisk ensure you have disabled screensavers as this will interrupt Scandisk.

You taped down the enter key? That's very... inventive - but not really necessary - instead try: scandisk /autofix to perform repairs without user interaction. "Disk doctor said something about the c: drive not being configured right" Best if you can quote the error messages exactly in order to determine the problem. IF the drive is not properly configured, that could cause scandisk to incorrectly identify clusters as being 'bad' - which seems to be what's happening here. "Is this really doing anything?" Yes - likely it's likely making a mess of your hard drive (302+ bad clusters!). Maybe shut it down? Thinking - it's a habit.

You are getting too many hard drives errors. I'm afraid it's dying. Time for a new one.

Thanks for the responses, to: M, no screen savers so not an issue. And to answer jboys question I went ahead and stopped the scandisk, figure I can always restart. Retried norton rescue, Diagnose disk- test integrity of disk. (the response) Drive C: may not be configured correctly norton disk doctor cannot continue testing the drive. Surface test - test the surface of the disk, (the response) Drive C: may not be configured correctly norton disk doctor cannot continue testing the drive. And as far as typing in scandisk\autofix. Not real sure how to approach Dos commands, or enter Dos, although I think that's where my computer sits now. I was able to type in C:dir and see files, but I guess doesn't mean they are not corrupted. Why would the C:drive not be configured correctly If I have not reformatted and worked fine the day before.Can I reformat and save my old data. Partitions around the so called bad sectors. Any ideas appreciated. Thanks in Advance

Whenever you start to get a ridiculous amount of bad clusters from scandisk or other utility, it either means that the drive is on the way out, or that the disk is misconfigured, causing scandisk not to give a true reading of the drive. Bad configuration usually comes from incorrect BIOS settings for the drive, although that seems odd on such a recent machine - detection is pretty much automatic. Still, check the BIOS - maybe see if you have an 'auto' selection for the drive. As far as DOS - it's pretty fussy - the direction of the slash makes a difference. From a: you'd enter scandisk c: /autofix from c: you'd only need scandisk /autofix Yes, the command prompt is the basic DOS7xx (Windows DOS) Sure, you can reformat, but if there's an underlying disk issue, could lead to problems. No, your old data would be gone format erases the disk. Thinking - it's a habit.

If you don't have a drive overlay on the HD and it's not set up as a multiboot system do this: Boot with a bootdisk. At the a:\> prompt type: fdisk/mbr and enter. That refreshes the master boot record. I've seen it fix the 'flashing cursor' problem as well as partitions that seem to be missing or corrupted.