Hello, I have been on and off this forum over the past month or so.. thinking I had a hard disk failing.. and each time seems that was not the problem.. Would like to take some precautions ... Yesterday.. had failure to boot.. Message was registry missing Missing HIMEM.SYS Missing DBLBUFF.SYS Missing IFSHLP.SYS Use command prompt only to start.. (5) upon entering a command prompt... I typed scanreg /restore message was.. bad or missing file ,, I think .. in any event would not run.. then I found my system restore disk, inserted into a: and rebooted... same thing.. could not run scanreg /restore.. Tried again.. this time the message above was not there but I got this message PRIMARY HARD DISK FAILURE... I was about to swap out a hard drive from an old computer to see if I could get up and online in order to get to this forum... THEN.. i decided to give the hard drive C: (HAVE A D: TOOO) a swift "WHACK"... i was a bit pi___ 'd.. so I HIT it ... while booting.. and well.. here I am on the forum it booted... QUESTION.. can I for saftey reason copy my ME system from c: to D:.. I do have B's clip and i also have Norton system works... will either of them "clone" my op system to d: so if I have a failure I am not out of bsn?? 2ndly... can i just order a new hard drive,, scan my old one (assumieng it starts) for virus' then copy (EXACT) copy to my new drive by putting the NEW drive in the slot where my D: drive is now.. then after the copy.. put the newly copied to hard drive back as the c: drive and put my old d: back in.. am i making any sense?? 3rdly... can i run scanreg from windows right now?? or should i do a "restore"... when i use the hard drive mfg.. web site to test the drive (at least a week ago ) it tests ok?? what is going on?? sorry for such a long post... thanks.. mike

hello whacking hard drives is not recomended. but some times the read write arms stick. in older drives. read about others doing what you did.and it worked. this is agood sign your drive is dieing. now if your norton system works came with norton ghost your all set for cloneing the drive. ••• Resistance is invigorating! •••kill spyware

As mentioned, you can't just do a straight copy, you need something like Ghost to do that. Personally I'd back-up my data files immediately, chuck the old HD in the bin (if it's survived a good knock, it will probably have it in for you and go completely next time) and start with a fresh install - treat it as a time for a spring-clean ;-)