Boot disk failure, MBR screwed? How do I fix it?

[rossyl]

Hi,

PC was running fine for ages till a recent Windows Update. On the reboot I got Boot disk failure.

Very occasionally it will boot up, work for 30mins then crash and won't reboot. However, now it will not boot into Windows at all.

So how do I fix it?

I was thinking plug drive into aother PC backup everything

Then is there a way to fix the PC without having to do an XP reinstall?

Thanks

 

[rossyl]

BIOS is picking it up fine.

I tried to plug into into my sis' laptop using this parallel to USB thing - didn't work.

Stuck it back in the PC. It booted up fine. Ran CHKDSK (without the /f command) it reported no bad sectors etc.

It's now working fine. But obviously there is something not right.

Any utilities to check the
- boot sector
- hard drive running
- temp of hard drive.

Its a seagate baracuda IV IDE

Thanks

 

[rossyl]

seagate - drive self test (DST) fails.

So does that mean the drive is basically dying?