Things like that problem are no more important than breaking a finger nail, when you have a Backup Image file of your C drive safely stored on another hard drive or burned to DVD's.
Just about a week ago, I had a problem with a bad piece of software that I'd downloaded. It was supposed to be an Anti-Trojan program, but, it tried to eat my windows. I couldn't even shut down Windows because it had already eaten "Shutdown.exe".
So it was
first finger on the power button for ten seconds and DOWN she went.
I rebooted with my Ghost 2003 boot disk and restored my last Ghost Backup Image File.
Ten minutes later I was back in business,, no harm, no foul and NO cries for HELP.
Even a hard drive crash, becomes nothing more than an inconvenience when you have a recent backup of your C drive, "In The Can" as they say in Hollywood.
So backup your C drive at least once a week and thumb your nose at HD problems, software problems and just about any other problems you can think of.
I use Ghost to back up my system. I've been using Ghost since it was first released in 1997. I've upgraded it a few times since then but I still run the DOS version, Ghost 2003 booting from a DOS boot floppy disk formatted under Windows ME.
There are many other perfectly good backup programs floating around out there and some you can even get for FREE, but I've never found anything as quick, simple and flexible as Ghost 2003.
Ghost 11.5 (2005) comes close as it runs exactly like Ghost 2003, but it's too large to fit on a single floppy disk....but it will back up and restore Windows Vista and Windows 7 32/64.
I run it from a bootable flash drive or CD when I need to use it.
Sorry, I'm beginning to ramble. We Old Timers tend to do that sometimes.
Y'all have a great day now, Y'hear?
Old Timer