I have been having problems running XP and nothing I did using my recovery CD was helping so I decided to format and reload from scratch. Now when I try and load XP from CD I get a message saying "C Drive Missing'. I have just run Fdisk/status from an old floppy disk and it shows Disk 1 as present but with no drive letter allocated 60G size and 60G free - although my original disk was 250G. Can anyone help please, how do I allocate a drive to the disk and how do I recovery my missing 190G ? Thanks

What kind of drive is it, who is the manufacturer. If it's not Toshiba then go to the manufacturers web site and download their drive utility and let it check out the drive.

Sounds to me like it's going bad.

The PC is an HP Pavillion t775uk, 200 GB SATA 7200 rpm not sure of the drive manufacture but I have been on the HP site and can't see any drive utility listed.

No, you need the drive manufacturer, not the computer manufacturer.

Click on Start then Run, type msinfo32 and press Enter.
Expand Components
Expand Storage
Click on Disks

The Model line should tell you who the manufacturer is.

OK I have identified that it is a Samsung Drive and have downloaded the Disk Manager and Disk Utility (ESTool) programmes. When I run the Manager it sees the Drive and correctly identifies it as 200G but wont perform any tasks and advises that to run the ESTool. The ESTool fails to recognise the drive on the auto detection facility. Both Tools have various options but I need some guidance on what to do next. Your help is much appreciated.

What model is the drive? I found interesting info here: Samsung HD103UJ problem with SATA. Post #7 has detailed "How to" fix instructions.

Ztruker

Apologies for the delayed response - I've been busy. The post you directed me to seemed to fit my circumstance so worked through everything methodically but still no response. But in the meantime I have become more familiar with the ESTool and have come to the conclusion that for the sake of a relatively small outlay I can purchase a new and bigger hard drive and save myself a lot of time & trouble ! As I say I was able to use the ESTool fully and think that the conclusion is that my drive is dead !! Thanks again for your advice and help and if I have any trouble installing the new drive I will be straight back on here for help !

Persistence pays off again! Well done.