I restarted my PC...and it won't come back on.

I'm back on my PC...after what seems like an eternity. Only on Ubuntu. Quite a nifty and easy to use OS, I'll definitely keep the CD around, if I knew I could use the net the whole time on this PC, I would have done that a LOT sooner.

I did what you said about the HDD regenerator, Retro. I don't have the pay version...yet, but like you said it was going like 1 bar every 2 minutes, found one bad sector and stopped, as it was the trial version.

Gonna try backing up files for most of the day, and reinstalling Vista. I know I probably need a new HD though. What do I have to do to get it to the RMA? Oh, I also did the memtests, my RAM is 100% fine according to them. I didn't see a HD scanning link posted here, I don't think. Unless I missed it somewhere.

 

Go to western digital's website and download a CD ISO of WDDiag tools. Burn it onto a CD or get the floppy version and test the HDD. if the program gives you an error, look it up on WDs website and if they say the drive needs to be shipped back, start a RMA process with the error code you received and you should get your replacement drive within 2 weeks after they received it.

 

Exactly this. Get the error code and give them a shout.

 

Ok, will do. Thanks for all the help, guys.

 

Got Vista back. My PC is actually a LOT faster now, but I did the WD Diag tools, and it turns out I have a S.M.A.R.T. error.

Yep, looks like my HD really is screwed. Good thing its covered on their site. Don't know if I'll get a second one, I think I might use that 160 gig EEE PC as my second HD, among other things. I don't really need THAT much space. but 160 gig is more than enough for like all my stuff on one thing, with some left over.

 

You will get a direct replacement of that drive. If they don't have one instock or they don't make them anymore, then they'll give you one from the same model series of equal value.

Know someone who sent in a 640gig HDD that crapped out early and he received a 750gig HDD in return from WD.