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Well, in that case, I stand by my suggestion to try a low-level format followed by a reinstall.
The Best Medicine > Magic. Because SCIENCE! can prove the former.
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Vouching on the LiveCD method as well. Make sure you have a suitable external hard drive at hand, too.
Linux Mint should be good enough for that purpose, not to mention that you can shove it into your PC as an alternate OS in case you need to do recovery stuff or if you just feel like trying something else other than Windows.
Oh, and AFAIK low-level format utilities depend on the drive used. Are you able to take a look at the drive vendor or model?
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Oh okay.
Well Alexia used a um.. Unbuntu disk so we could access the harddrive and get the important files off it before the formatting. She says she knows how to do a "regular" formatting of the disk, but unsure of how one actually does a low-level format. She's never done this kinda thing before, and a sort of step by step process of how one does that might be appreciated here.
She told me it's a Seagate Barracuda when I said you need the drive vendor or model, assuming thats what you need?
We've got Windows Install Disks though. ^_^
It's fun to say berry! I berry talk all the day through!
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For Seagate, I think you can make do with SeaTools from Seagate.com
Grab the ISO for SeaTools for DOS, burn it into CD, and then boot from CD. Select the option to zero-fill the hard disk, and do a full zero-fill to make the drive factory-fresh. After that you can boot from the restore CD and install Windows as usual
The Best Medicine > Magic. Because SCIENCE! can prove the former.
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SeaTools isn't detecting the harddrive. Some googling on my own seems to say this is a common issue, and recommends changing the SATA mode from AHCI to ATA or whatever in the BIOS, but we are unable to do that. The option to do si blackened and seems to have no ability to alter it.
Is there some other tool that I could use to do this? What next?
It's fun to say berry! I berry talk all the day through!
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Well, that put a spanner in the works.
Ok, here's another thing wre can try. Boot from Ubuntu again, and see if there's GParted. If GParted isn't there, just issue the command "apt-get install gparted" (don't worry, it's not permanent). After GParted is installed, launch it, pick your hard drive, and select Device -> Create partition table. Create a new GPT table (if Windows still can't boot after this, repeat this step but create a MSDOS table. I don't know what model your PC is, so i can't tell if it uses UEFI, which requires an GPT table, or legacy BIOS, which uses the MSDOS table), and click "Apply". Now reboot to the Windows Install discs and you should be good to go.
The Best Medicine > Magic. Because SCIENCE! can prove the former.
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Hey, just wanted to update you all by saying that this stuff actually totally worked..
For like, a little bit. Turns out the HDD really is dying though, and will just have to be replaced. Oh well.
Thanks for the help you all!
It's fun to say berry! I berry talk all the day through!
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If you're in the market for a new hard drive, do yourself a favour and don't go for Seagate. I had one foul out on me some three years ago, and tell you what, it wasn't good.