dell inspiration 600m with windows 2000 help please!?

Question

i have a dell 600m with windows 2000 on it. i was usin it and it hung suddenly.so i shut it off directly!.
i turned it on again and on the startin windows screen it stops loading and says:
"the following file is corrupt or missing
c: winnt/system32/config/system
"u may try fixing it using the original windows utility disk."
so i tried it but no luck.
it dosnt even install new windows .
while checking disks it hangs on 87%
please help thanx in advance

Answer 1

Your disk drive may be defective.

If you don't mind losing your data, you could try reformatting it and reinstalling. If the disk is going bad, that won't help for very long.

Answer 2

You have a corrupt sector on your hard drive. Unfortunately, it is in the Windows (winnt) directory itself so it is keeping Windows for booting. If the restore is hanging at 87%, you probably will not be able to save the hard drive without doing an fdisk and a format.

You may still be able to recover your data. Since it is a laptop, you would need to purchase one of the hard drive enclosures that they make for laptop drives. (Look online or any good computer store). The enclosure will let you put the drive inside it and then connect it to another computer by a USB cable.

Even though you can not start Windows, most or all of your files should still be on the hard drive. Connect it externally and you should be able to copy everything off of it (Pictures, music, etc).

Once you have recovered the data, you can attempt an fdisk and a format. If they return bad sector errors, then you get to buy that bigger hard drive you have been wanting for the last year. The current one is not any good. The drives in most Dell laptops last about 2-3 years.

Hope that helps...