C drive is unaccessible

Several hours after successfully setting up a wireless network(The hardwire machine with WinXp and the wireless with Win2K; Linksys router and USB adaptor), the hardwired one froze. Since then I have tried everything but the C drive is not accessible. I can boot a FIX-IT utilities CDROM but the program cannot access the C drive, I have tried everything but reformatting the C drive (which I don't want to do). Help!

 

Hi callisto2

First check to see if the hard drive is seen in the systems bios. The drive needs to be seen there before you can boot from it.

If not, recheck the drives jumpers and try a different IDE cable. Its possible that the drive has just died. Try downloading the manufacturers drive test and running that. Is the drive under a warranty?

 

The bios sees the drive at boot. Utilizing the original WinXP CDROM and after many tries I was able to get in repair mode and do a chkdsk. It reported that the volume appears to be in good condition. So this may not be a hardware problem but corruption of WinXp. A virus? Whatever, I still can boot the windows installation in the C drive. Any other suggestions?