Sorry to just show up with a question and hope for an answer, but it is an odd situation and not my computer (to risk losing data on).

Here's the situation:

- The PC is from Fry's electronics, store-built.
- Warranty is expired.
- Windows XP Media Center (2003 I think) is the only OS loaded.
- The primary harddrive is a 40 gig and the only other drive contents are program files.
- Media is all loaded on a secondary harddrive.
- Yes, I mean harddrive, not partition.

While burning a dvd, the PC dumped an error message (no, he didn't write it down or remember the verbaige). The system was locked up - nether the keyboard nor mouse responded, so he hard-rebooted (held down the power button for five seconds and then cycled the power). Windows refused to boot (I don't know exactly how far it gets).

Since it is store-built, it didn't come with the original OS disk, but hard a system recovery disk. He tried using it, but Windows still refused to boot properly. He tried botting into safe mode, but it wouldn't load.

Then he decided to try using tools from old Windows 95 and 98 disks, including recovery files (not sure what he mean't by that last bit). Nothing worked... He also seems to think there may be some issue with the disk drive since he couldn't get the programs working the way he wanted (may be user error, but if it *is* another hardware failure, the problem may be bigger than originally thought).

One thing that did work for him was to run a disk scan, and the result was a vague message that there were bad sectors, but not the quantity or locations. If it is just a bad harddrive, we're ok trying to fix it by buying a new primary harddrive and seeing if we can reload the OS onto it from the store's provided recovery disk. But if it is something more, like a bad motherboard, or combination of hardware failures, he decided he'd rather just get a new PC.

So he called me, and I've got a copy of Knoppix (version 3.something - using it now searching for utilities to help out, and got stuck...), but I can't figure out what utilities may be on this disk that would help out.

So what I'm really trying to figure out right now is if this Knoppix disk has some kind of utility that allows me to scan the hardware for failures to see if it just a bad harddrive or more. He doesn't want to buy a whole new PC if it can be fixed by simply replacing the harddrive.

Thanks for any insight you may be able to provide, and your patience. This is all the data I was told over the phone...