Quantum Fireball HD flames out!

Fellow Creatures,
I am speaking to you from my Emachine Family PC. Last night my old Compaq with an extended warranty that expired June 30, 2005 flamed out. For those of you that track such things it was just over 4 years old but it did run 24/7.

I shut the system down last night thinking perhaps I had a software glitch in windows as VCOM disk fixer and Smart Drive tests said everything was fine. Go figure. I came home earlier to check the progress of DENNIS on National Weather maps only to find my always on machine locked up with no monitor view. A reboot returned me to normal but system kept shutting down.

I could have come here but decided to do my own tests. Finally after a few hours the think just would not boot up. HD just went clunk...clunk and then it told me the sad truth... no HD found, no operating sytem. Today I went to Best Buy using a gift card got nice discount on 80 Gig. Seagate (double the dead one). Seagate CD did everything for me. Loaded up my Home XP and it is humming with no internet connection, no AV, just the operating system that's it.

Here is the questions: What do I do first? Do I load up XP SP2 disk now? Do I do the activation thing now? I hear we have to phone in now? Do I load Ghost 2003 (pretty sure I got to do that) get all my Ghost updates first? I know I did at least one after I got the disk. And do my Ghost Image restore from May 30, 2005 (the last one) which of course would restore everything as it was at what point? I assume SP2, activation files and all just go back on normal without problems as it was in May. Right? One final question I always thought boot sequence during such times was from A: found out as part of all this I boot from CDROM per my Recovery Bios setting. Yet all my Ghost Boot disks are on floppy disks and integrity checks were just fine from floppies. I guess when the interity checks found nothing in in CDROM they automatically went to A drive and found the boot disk.

Any help or comments? I know there is alot of questions here. Especially those who use Ghost 2003 and have done alot of restores, because I have done none. Never need to. Most appreciative. Things have gone way to smooth to this point. Was prepared at least with recent image. In fact slightly over due for new image when the torch went out. Maybe I'll just reload what I want, start clean and throw everything else out... Maybe not! Some good stuff would go bye bye. Thanks.

 

You can restore the old May image if you like. You won't be asked to activate (pretty sure. I never get asked). If you choose a clean install, I would Ghost both before and after running WindowsUpdate. Ghosting is a lot faster than reinstalling, so if WindowsUpdate jacks your system up, you can start over more easily. After Windows update (poor you, if you have dial-up), I'd Ghost again, so that you have a new baseline.

 

Close Hauled,
Thank you for your reply. I decided to just start fresh I can always go back and pick up the May image. I had the really important stuff saved to an external Hard Drive (where my image is stored too). I have broadband but even with that it took some time to get Windows updated. I am working from the recovered Compaq right now . The new Seagate Hard Drive is very quiet. Makes the whole machine run silent, just the fans. Losing a Hard Drive is not fun, but fixing up your machine and reloading everything gives one a real sense of achievement. .

Yes, Close Haul you are correct I activated Windows over the net no problem. No phone call was needed I will post link for those interested in what that was all about. It is good to have the machine up as I did not want to get a new machine at this time. Longhorn is not to far away.

Here you go as stated above:

https://www.wilderssecurity.com/showthread.php?t=68085&highlight=windows activation

 

Glad to see that things are working out. I am a little surprised that you were asked to activate. I use the corporate edition of Ghost 7.5 all the time and never get asked.

The only time I ever had to re-activate was when I was in the middle of doing massive repairs to my registry to get my home computer up and running again.