Formatting and Re-installing

Hey,
I have dell xps 15 windows 7 machine with 8 gigs of memory, which i recently upgraded to windows 8.

But i have constantly been having problems with my hdd, I ran the dell support utility and my hdd fails the "linear read test-2"
So it tells me to perform chkdsk. But my chkdsk always gets stuck at 29%, and then i'm forced to do a hard reset.

So I wanted to format my hard dirve, but I'm not sure how to get back all my programs and reinstall my windows 8.
can anyone tell me how to go about it?

Yuk. You don't have a lot of options at this point.

Before you upgraded to Windows 8, did you have any saved images of the previous system?

If so you could restore that and then re-upgrade to Windows 8.

Or, if you saved an image of Windows 8 after the upgrade but before the error, you could restore that.

Formatting the hard drive will buy you some time, but how long have you had your XPS? At least 3 years??
3 years is a typical life expectancy of a hard drive..at this point you may want to consider replacing the hard drive.

As far as saving your programs, without an image, your main way of getting back the applications is to re-install them.

Here is a suggestion but I am not sure how well it will work. You can TRY to save the current system
to an image. It may or may not work depending on where the hard drive is failing. If the imaging software
needs to read data off of a cylinder that is bad, the imaging process will probably fail. If there is no data
on the bad cylinder, it may work. If you can create an image, then afterword, format the hard drive or
replace the hard drive and then restore the image.

How to create a Windows system image in Windows 7 and Windows 8

Check the hard drive with the manufacturer's diagnostic tools.

Hard Drive Diagnostics Tools and Utilities (Storage) - TACKtech Corp.
Hard Drive Diagnostic Procedure


http://www.eightforums.com/tutorials/8956-system-image-create-windows-8-a.html

http://www.eightforums.com/tutorials/2855-system-repair-disc-create-windows-8-a.html

http://www.eightforums.com/tutorials/9044-backup-restore-files-folders-windows-8-a.html

http://www.eightforums.com/tutorial...overy-restore-image-computer-windows-8-a.html

madhav said:

Hey,
I have dell xps 15 windows 7 machine with 8 gigs of memory, which i recently upgraded to windows 8.

But i have constantly been having problems with my hdd, I ran the dell support utility and my hdd fails the "linear read test-2"
So it tells me to perform chkdsk. But my chkdsk always gets stuck at 29%, and then i'm forced to do a hard reset.

So I wanted to format my hard dirve, but I'm not sure how to get back all my programs and reinstall my windows 8.
can anyone tell me how to go about it?

Click to expand...

Simple approach. Reset your PC (will format and remove everything/reinstall Win8; back you files up thoroughly). Reinstall your software. Not sure in the long run if this approach would end up being faster or slower for you, but it's easy.