I turned my computer off yesterday and when trying to boot it up today, it gave me an error 'bout not being able to read C:\ (but only after several things were loaded, like the bootup virus scanner). I can get into Dos fine and work in there, but Windows seems to give a message 'bout VDK being damaged. I've got to go for the weekend, but hope to fix it as soon as possible when I'm back. For that, I'd like to ask if anybody here knows how to fix this.

run scandisk and chkdisk in dos..
start windows in safe mode

it sounds like some part of the harddisk is corrupted, involving whatever vdk is.
you`ll probably be able to reinstall whatever it is, although the harddisk might not be very healthy.

Time to dust off the HD then, I guess, and get another one (and bigger one :D ) relatively soon. Can't afford to waste all my projects >_>

Anyways, back, and will be fixing the comp now. Dad's comp's not com(p)fortable... 400Mhz, 96Mb Ram, 4Gb HD and WinXP :blink: Better get my baby running again :D . Tiki, signing off for undefined time, but hopefully five minutes :whistle:

WinXP on such a weak computer... Erm... Ok... :blink:

Well, the easiest thing is ususally to plug the "broken" disk into another box - see if it works, and run a bunch of drive tools on it. Personally, I think that Win XP's arte the easiest to use; that's what I'd do in your situation anyway.

Do you have a cd burner you can run from DOS? If not, drive swapping is probably the best way to get your files off it - unless you own an gigantic stack of floppies and can afford to lose a week of your life(!)

Another solution would be something like this: http://ftp.heanet.ie/pub/ubuntu-releases/w...e-live-i386.iso. You burn it onto a cd, and can boot off it. Once there, at least you'll have an OS you can burn files from / network elsewhere with. Depend's how Linux-friendly you are though!

From what you've said, if your computer is getting past the BIOS stage, and able to run some programs, that means that it's probable that only *some* of the disk is fecked - luckily for you, that's the Windows part(!) At least that means there's hope!

Seriously though - I couldn't advise drive swapping more -I've always found it the easiest way to do stuff like this.

75% done, and everything that's found (5 clusters) contain data from the game Pandemonium. Also, while not scanning the physical part of the HD, it find problems in D3Dsomething.dll, in a Sysbackup folder. Anyways, still scanning...

Edit: WOOHOO! Guess which comp I'm on :D My guess is that this HD's been getting eenieweenie damages from all the powerfailures the messed-up electricity in this street's causing (420V once, when an electrician was only measuring things? Fried dad's screen, it did >_> ) and decided to notice it when I started it up (although I shut it off like it should be done... no power failures or something like that in the last session before it noticed the damage)

Closed my comp last night, and when booting it up again this morning, the same problem came up >_< Time to get a new HD as soon as possible, I guess :wall: