Will a new hard drive solve my problem...or not?

[grasshappa]

Howdy, all.  This is my first post here - it seems like a wonderful forum.  I didn't find a post which answered my questions, so I'm starting this one.  Sorry if this is obvious and already answered elsewhere...

Ok, my buddy's got a Dell Latitude C600, which he purchased as refurb.  It's using Revision A23 bios (which Dell and others claim is most recent) was using WinXP, has 20G IBM (ntfs format) HDD.  The thing "froze" a while back and went to blue screen.  After that, he could never get Windows to come back up, it would just cycle through the bios and ask for bios password to change setup (Dell security!)  He had another friend reset the password by shorting the cmos chip, I believe, and now the bios is accessible, and all passwords are disabled (including HDD security).

Then I took over and tried to boot with winxp disc.  This says that there's a problem trying to install to c: partition.  So, then I go to the recovery portion of winxp and try chkdsk, fixboot, fixmbr, and format.  They all give errors like bad sectors, and bad boot sector.  So, I download Hitachi drive fitness and go through all of it's diagnostics which say the same thing - your HDD would serve you better as a skipping stone.  Ok, ok, hard drives fail, and this one seems to have failed.

So, I take my other roommate's Inspiron (running XP) HDD (fujitsu 40G), which I think is the same sort of thing - it has the same exact connectors and bay, and put it into the Latitudes bay where the junk hd was.  I boot it and it now brings up the windows recovery screen, with the options of safe mode, safe mode blah, or start windows normally.  Well none of these work.  They all cycle back to bios startup and windows never appear(s).

So, I suppose what I'm asking is, should I expect simply swapping out this bad hdd for one that I know is functional to bring up windows, or will I need a different driver or some such thing?  Also, is there any more hope for this HDD - why can't I re-initialize this disk and start over writing on the remaining good sectors?  Basically I don't want to tell him to buy a new HDD only to find out that there is some more fundamental problem with this computer.  If the boot sector did go bad, then this would explain the symptoms, I suppose.  However, I am also suspicious of the ghost, et al.

Sorry for the longwinded story.  If you've made it this far, I thank you very much for your time and your help too, if you so choose!   

[grasshappa]

I'm sorry I forgot to mention the very last thing I tried with this hdd.  I made a Win98SE boot cd and used debug script to clear the partition table(which worked I guess), and then tried doing fdisk /mbr and format, which failed too.  fdisk wouldn't let me delete the non-dos ntfs partition and add a new primary dos partition. fdisk simply didn't want to deal with this hdd at all.  Then I went back to the XP cd and tried to reinstall (thinking that the partition table may have actually been cleared and that this might help matters), and the same partition error occured again.

[2k_dummy]

Try repeating the debug routine, then run fdisk without using the switches. After running fdisk, reformat.

[grasshappa]

I tried this debug script (using whatever dos is on WIN98SE disk):
http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;EN-US;106419
and later, this script:
http://www.fdisk.com/fdisk/HardDrive.htm

After each, I went into fdisk and y, y to accept big ntfs types, 4 to display partition information, and the partition is still there!  These scripts are apparently not deleting the partition table.  Why?
When I say 1, 1 to create primary dos partition, it says no space to create primary dos partition.
format c: (with win98se dos - syntax is correct?) returned format not supported on drive c: 
then tried fdisk /mbr - which returns: error writing fixed disk. the master boot code has not been updated.

now i notice this: when it's trying to create primary dos partition, the current fixed disk drive: says 1.  Shouldn't this be 0?  At any rate, it remains stuck at verifying drive integrity 0% complete.  Sometimes it sticks here and sometimes it comes out right away and says (like above) no space to create primary dos partition.

why can't this disk just be erased to all zeroes (on good sectors), remapped, and reinitialized?

2k dummy - by 'running fdisk without the switches' you mean that I should try to create a primary dos partition (which didn't work as above), yeah?  without /mbr switch, yeah?

[grasshappa]

scandisk says data could not be written to cluster 2.  The \io.sys file is currently using cluster 2. scandisk did not patch the cluster.

[2k_dummy]

Try the debug routine located here:

http://www.bitzenbytes.com/Content-Arcanum-18-1-34.html#boldscr

It should work a bit better.

[grasshappa]

same results with third debug script (win98se boot cd).  did script.  reboot (98) fdisk. delete ntfs partition (yes it was still there). create primary dos partition.  stuck at verifying drive integrity 0% complete.

[2k_dummy]

You probably need something like THIS .

[grasshappa]

Ok.  Am trying that.  Looks like I'll be getting back to you in a week or two...

Shouldn't this computer boot properly when I put a functional hd in it?

[Raptor]

How do you short a CMOS chip? And what does it do?