Has my HDD died?

[AnilSiv]

I have a windows 98 laptop, and I believe it was bought 8 years ago, does that give suffcient evidence that it has just died, it wont come past the IBM screen, wont load windows (not even in safe mode) and I think it may have sort of, well, died?
can anyone help me?
Anil
[email protected]

 

[The_Other_One]

I bet it has... That's a fairly common problem with laptops... I'd first boot it to a windows boot disk and run scan disk, see if you have any bad sectors and what not. If that comes out clean, maybe try a format and just reload it.

If format does come up with bad sectors, look around for a program that does a Low Level Format. Doing this will usally clear up bad sectors if the drive isn't too bad.

 

[Mattu]

Dose the hard drive light flash any? Do you hear the hard drive come on and start making that clicking noise like it dose normally?