is someone wants to upgrade his harddisk,how will he know that the motherboard supports his newly installed hd?and up to how much size of hd that is compatible just to achieve the maximum upgrade?How will one determine the exact specs of the hd before buying?any suggestions?Thank you.

You can get the specs for the motherboard off the net.. As long as he has the right connections, If its a Serial ATA he needs SATA connections. If its IDE it will most likely work if he has an available IDE connection. If he's running XP SP2 with all the updates there shouldn't be a problem with storage capacity. He will need one empty 3.5 inch bay to mount the drive inside the case. What kind of computer is being used?

If you are using W2k with service pack 4 or XP with SP2 you shouldn't have any problem with the size of the hdd. With out the SPs the BIOS will not recognize anything larger than 137GB which after swap space will leave about 128GB.

Most all new computers will use SATA hdds, but you can still use a SATA hdd with a motherboard that doesn't have SATA connections, you will just need to add a SATA controller card.

will the windows still load even if the harddisk is damaged?

Windows can load from spme damaged hard drives - but it can't load from just any damaged hard drive (it depends on where and how severe the damage is). The problem is that, even if it does load, you can't depend on being able to do anything with any reliability - you're just as likely to lose your work as you are to get it done.

what are the common symptoms of the heavily damaged hd?Can I see also the report from the POst as the PC boots that the hard disk has got some prob?

Some problems you'll see are increased load times, errors in applications/programs, corrupted data, missing data, etc, etc, etc.

I'd suggest download a free hard drive diagnostic from the maker of your hard drive in order to see it's exact status. While other hard drive tests will give you some information, the test from the disk manufacturer is designed for their equipment and will give more detailed results (which is especially useful if the hard drive is just starting to fail).

I want to download free diagnostic hdd tool from the site of the maker of the PC's hd but I dont know the manufacturer's name or brand.How would I know it without openign the casing?Thanks

Go to control panel/hardware/device manager. It will show a list of your devices. Double-click hard drives. It may or may not list your brand name. If you are upgrading the hard drive yourself, you are going to have to open the case anyway. The brand name is listen on a sticker on the drive usually. Just be sure to unplug your power cord and grab a metal part of your case to ground yourself before touching any internal devices.

Thanks.I opened the case and saw it was filled with dust.I wiped the dust off and blew them all.After that, it became ok.:-)

A clean computer is a happy computer .. A good rule of thumb if you have to replace the filter in your furnace you should problably clean the computer too.

What is the filter in the furnace?Which component there is a furnace?

I think Sneakycyber is talking about the furnace that is used to heat a house (nothing to do with a computer). In other words, you should clean out your computer on a regular basis.

hahaha....lol Thanks to all. I like this site everybody helps even for the small thing as such.