Hard Drive Crash: Reading FAT error, IFSHLP.sys file missing

Dell 8100 system, Windows ME OS

I was using my computer last night as usual and the computer hung and only the mouse would work, the background and music playing completely froze up. I waited a few minutes and powered down the computer after trying and failing with alt clt del. When I rebooted it went through the dell loadup screen and then said it could not boot F1 to retry F2 for setup. When I went into setup it was not recognizing my cd rom or harddrive. A few more boots and eventually it started to recognize both but took forever trying to load windows. When it finally did I tried safemode and it said the file IFSHLP.sys was corrupted or missing along with saying Registry/Configuration error use scan disk. When I attempt to run any scanreg out of dos it continues to give me failure reading C: errors. Also I attempted a reformat and it had an error reading C: when trying to do this.

After reading through the forums Ive created a boot disk for this file and am going to attempt to restore it later today. However, I did try to reinstall windows using the cd rom but it could only get to 59% of the system scan before it failed due to an Reading FAT Error. Also since my computer froze up the hard disk has been making a lot of noise when the computer is booting almost like a scratching and skipping noise, the only way to describe it is how my old PS2 cd rom used to sound before it failed.

I have a feeling that the harddisk has failed and that I am going to have to buy a new one, guess its better then the video card, processor, or motherboard going down, but a pain none the less. So if the C: is dead I would be interested in knowing exactly how to hook it up with my new hard drive, read something about a 'slave' drive, so that I could attempt to extract some valuable files from it. There isnt really much since I lost my first 3 years of college work last year when windows failed and I had to reformat, this time I actually saved big papers to floppy, so it isnt a big deal if it simply needs to go to the trash.

Thank you all for taking the time to read my problem and I appreciate any help you can give,
Chris

 

Tried the boot disk to extract IFSHLP.sys and it wouldnt work, of course I could be entering the extraction line incorrectly. Also when I try to do anything with the C: it comes up bad command of file name.

 

If you try writing other commands to the HD and they fail, you can be pretty much certain the drive's gone(the statement about that missing or corrupt file IFSHLP.SYS alone is bad news).However, if you can manage to go to the manufacturer's website and download onto a floppy, then you could run a diagnostic test of it(unless you already have such a floppy which came with the hard drive).

 

Just got off the phone with Dell and after running a series of tests which the final was:

IDE Drive Diagnostics running, please wait...
Primary IDE
Drive 0: IC35L040AVER07-0 - Fail. Return Code: 7


They determined my hard drive had failed and I needed to purchase a new one. Anyway after I pick it up can anyone help me on how exactly I might be able to pull any files off this disk or is headed straight for the garbage?

 

Set it up as a slave drive on that PC. You need to then change the jumper setting to "slave" and re-connect the IDE ribbon cable at the center since the front of the IDE cable will now connect with the new drive(which of course would be configured to a "master" setting).