Tom's Guide | Tom's Hardware | Tom's Games
 |
 |
 |
So for the past couple of weeks my system has seemingly randomly completley screwed itself on boot. It would go to the screen with the blinking underscore,just before the windows screen, and stay there for hours. The system would hang trying to boot a WinXP cd. Booting into a Win2000 cd worked, and so did the recovery console. FIXMBR would always say the drive had a non-standard MBR etc. CHKDSK always hung forever and forced a reboot. So skip a couple of weeks of restoring drive images and realizing its more low level; I did a seatools scan of the hard drive(seagate is the manf) which reported that the file system "failed with critical errors" although the sector by sector test passed. So it still fails after an quick NTFS format, a full windows initiated format, killdisk's one pass of zeros, and even deleting then recreating the partition. It also fails the same test after a clean install of windows. In any of the situations, partition magic 8 gave an error that the partition table was messed up, with error 110, which from what I've researched means the CHS doesn't match the LBA. On another note when the system goes to its never-ending blinking cursor stage, acronis disk director says that the MFT bitmap is corrupted. The weird thing right now is that even though those programs are reporting critical errors, windows boots. I do know that soon enough it will stop booting and go to the blinking cursor stage again, which is what I am trying to prevent at this point. If anyone knows how I can fix my MBR and such so that the partition table is correct that would be great. I really dont feel like buying a new hdd when I know this one isnt unfixable just really tedious. Thanks again.
C/H/S is really irrelevent above 16383/16/63--about 8 gig, as that's the highest that can be addressed. Above that you need LBA. So unless you've got an 8 gig or smaller drive I doubt any C/H/S vs LBA results are meaningful.
I've heard occasional problems arising when running analysis software on drives that were set up with partition magic. You might try another zero fill and then partition the drive using windows software. Then run the manufacturer's software to check the drive.
Verify the drive cable is good and tightly connected and the drive properly identified in cmos/bios setup.
0 
In BIOS set the Hard Drive to autodetect, plus set all other settings to default.
Use www.killdisk.com to zero fill the drive.
This usually works unless the drive is US!
0
get a dos boot disk and run fdisk /mbr
then load up xp console and type fixboot
and fixmbr
all should be fine now
Get Firefox
0
During the one pass zeros from killdisk, it got a "divide" error around 55%, so I assume if I try that again the same thing will happen. would it be okay to do the fdisk /mbr from within the xp console, i dont have a dos boot disk handy, nor even a floppy drive.
0
Trying to boot to a dos environment from an ultimate boot cd/dvd, in every environment they did not recognize or i could not access my system disk, although the bios easily recognized it with all of the proper settings.
0
If there's a problem with the drive at about 55% you may be able to partition around it.
Create the first partition of about 50% of the drive and the second one the last 40% of the drive. I believe partition magic can do it that way.How big is the drive? Are you sure the bios and the utility software are seeing it correctly?
0
I dont know why it stopped at 55%, currently there is just that 1 big 55.6GB partition on the drive with 1MB unallocated. Partition magic wont let me do anything to the drive because of the "partition table error 110" I would think the zero writing would erase the MBR too, but even right after the zero write and the full format. The seatools diagnostic and partition magic still show the errors.
0
Just for kicks, check your RAM.
Memtest
http://www.snapfiles.com/get/memtest86.html
Docmem
http://downloads-zdnet.com.com/3001-2094-1534814.html
0
I uploaded a version of disk manager here. You can still use drivers and all for user and password. You may want to run it and do a low level format on the drive.
That may not fix it and might even make it worse (although I doubt it) but it sounds like nothing you've tried has helped. So you don't have much to lose.
0
" would it be okay to do the fdisk /mbr from within the xp console" from post # 4 . From XP console it would be FIXMBR, fdisk is 98/me program not XP.
You might want to check in bios and be sure that any MBR virus checking is turn off, if your bios has that function.
0
So I ran memtest86 for kicks, and it produced multiple errors. Specifically on tests 1 and 4. I will be taking this up with corsair, but my bigger concern is if and how that would be effecting my mbr issues. I would do the low level format right now, but i need the currently installed os and apps to do daily things. Every time I do FIXMBR, it always gives me the message about a non-standard mbr and warnings about damaging. It never gives the normal syntax.
0
Have you removed the faulty ram? If you leave it in it will inevitably lead to corruption of your files.
I used to have a signature but it disappeared and I just couldn't be bothered writing another so please feel free to ingore this.
0
"but my bigger concern is if and how that would be effecting my mbr issues."
All data going to and from a hard drive goes through the RAM.
0
So do you think if I put in sticks on clean, non faulty ram, and then do the full low level format and reinstall the os that the mbr and partition tables should be error free after that? Also I ran windows mem diagnostic which in the standard tests found no errors in a couple of passes, and the extended tests never ran, but I plan on running them. I most likely wont put in the same model ram I have, but ram very similar to mine that has passed memory diagnostics.
0
If you have had defective RAM, it's hard to tell what you need to do next. You will have to install good RAM (run a memory test overnight) and then evaluate the situation. It's 'possible' that you won't even have any other problems.
0
So after some correspondence with corsair and more in depth memtests, I am sending 1 of my 2 512 modules back. I am surprised this module didnt cause more problems than it may have, because memtest found 60 errors in 45 minutes. So the other module ran in hours with memtest and no errors. I plan on attempting low level formats, etc tomorrow sometime and seeing if there are still critical errors and so forth on the drive. Thanks again to everyone that has pitched in, I hope this ram issue fizes the original problem.
0
Avoid the low level format and just do a zero fill. If you have the same problems after the zero fill then do the LLF.
0
So I did a one pass zero fill today, which finished fine. Then I created an NTFS partition with acronis disk director. Booted into partition magic 8 and it no longer gave the bad partition error. I then went into the seatools hdd diagnostic like usual, and it failed the file structure test with critical errors like usual. I tested another drive with the same seatools app and it passed so I know the testing app isn't faulty. I then did multiple partitioning things within partition magic, and when I went to create partition, when I selected any type other than FAT or LinuxSwap, meaning NTFS FAT32 and others all gave information about the drive possibly not being able to boot because of it being larger than the 1024 cylinder/cycle limit. I thought this might have something to do with it continiously failing the hdd diagnostic. Any combination of partitions, mainly NTFS always failed the check. I'm starting to think I just need a new drive, even though the sector by sector scan passed and there are so s.m.a.r.t errors. any suggestions at this point?
0
I haven't used the partition and diagnostic software you've tried but it sounds like you've done everything right. Since you've fixed the RAM problem I suppose the HD is most likely bad, as you suggest.
0
So with a brand new samsung hdd and a low level format and partition, then running the seatools diagnostic still produced file system errors. Again the seatools passed another drive. And again part magic reported that if i wanted to use the drive as primary ntfs that it would exceed the 1024 cylinder limit and it might not boot; just like the last drive. It hasn't failed yet but I am positive the stick of ram in the machine is clean and the new drive is fine samsungs diag software passed it but of course didn't test the file system. The only variable left is the mobo, but who knows.
0
You don't need to low level format a new drive. It just needs to be partitioned and formatted.
My advice is to avoid all the third party disk setup utilities. If it's a simple partition and format let your OS disk do it.
Yeah, there may be problems with the motherboard or even still the RAM. (Did you change the IDE cable?) But it's hard to tell because of the messages from the various utilities you're using. And a seagate diagnostic disk may not work with a samsung.
I'd think any utility that gives a warning about the 1024 cylinder limitation is archaic or there's something wrong with the way the bios is seeing the drive.
0  |
 |
 |
This post is quite old and has been locked from receiving new replies. Please create a new posting instead.
| Ads by Google |
