Windows experts...
 

Had an issue with a field computer running a side-scan sonar survey yesterday; computer froze and then shut down. Restarts gave a
primary hard drive error upon start up.

If I 'F1" to continue and either get a reboot error OR if I put the Boot CD in the drive, I get to windows set-up.

Went into BIOS, and the hard drive is recognized, but the size is listed as '0', which concerns me...

put in the boot CD and tried to do a repair, but both the check disk (ChkDsk) and Fixboot commands give me a drive not recognized.

I figure my next step is to reinstall Windows?
I have the projects backed up and all of the.data files, so we won't be losing any previous surveys, but we had a 1/2 day yesterday of hard fought survey lines in very shallow, bouldery waters I'd prefer not to scrub.

any thoughts?

Sounds like your Hard Drive %$%$%$%$ the Bed

thats the consensus here

New Hard Drive then re-install

Yep, and once you've installed and tweaked, make an image (say Acronis?) so that if you need to reinstall you can go back..

There are other things but that is the gist... To be realy sure I would probably slave the drive onto another computer / external hard drive and see

going to add a drive, probably set as a raid drive... as a back-up