New win2k machine w/ 200gb harddrive keeps getting corrupt

TrevorM · 04-28-2005, 01:09 PM

I've recently finished building a new machine for a friend (first bad idea). The harddrive is a 200gb maxtor, and the machine is running win2k pro, w/ sp4. At first I had trouble getting it to see more than 129gb. I made a new win2k boot disc with sp4, then it recognized all 200gb.

My friend ran the machine for about a week and a half, and as he was copying files to the hd, he started getting write errors saying the drive was corrupt. When he rebooted, after the cmos screen it just went black and said "error loading operating system". I tried to repair the machine using the recovery console, and did fixboot and fixmbr. But didn't have much luck. So I formatted and reinstalled windows. Another aprox week and a half later, while downloading some files he basicly had the same problem.

I'm having trouble reviving the machine, and think I'm giong to be forced to format and reinstall once again!!

Any idea why this keeps happening? I ran the powermax scan on the drive and it reports it to be error free. Could my friend have gotten a boot sector virus twice? Or is it more likely a configuraton problem?

One thing that I never did after installing windows was to edit the registry to enable 48-bit LBA support. I had assumed that since win2k sp4 recongized all 200gb of the drive, I didn't have to add the registry value for lba support. Think that could be the problem?

I'm never building a computer for someone again... :(

Evil Genius · 04-28-2005, 04:42 PM

It sounds like you might actually have a RAM memory issue which is causing the operating system and other programs to become corrupt. I believe that this might be the most likely issue, you can run a memory diagnostic to double check your RAM memory chips, microsoft has one posted here http://oca.microsoft.com/en/windiag.asp

If everything checks out then it might be the IDE cables, replace it or switch them to test it out. If its not, then it can either be the hard drive itself or motherboard...but a motherboard issue is very unlikely, but possible nonetheless.

Hope this helps post back and let us know how you made out !!

TrevorM · 04-29-2005, 07:50 AM

Thanks for the suggestion, I hadn't really considered that as I've never really run into memory issues before. I bought the mobo, cpu, and memory as an upgrade bundle, so I'd assume everything must be compatible with each other. But I guess you never know when you get a bad stick of ram. I'll definitley keep it in mind.

I think the problem I was having may have been due to me messing up the install in the first place. When I installed the 1st time, I didn't know about the 129gb limitation and ended up converting the drive to a dynamic drive. Applied the windows 48-bit LBA registry patch, created a partition and formatted the unused space. Then I tried to merge the partitions. Now... You cannot merge partitions on a dynamic disk, that is the system boot drive. So... I reinstalled windows, this time the windows installer saw the full 200gb. But I'm thinking what I esentially did was fool windows into allowing me to merge partitions on a dynamic drive, when it shouldn't have let me, which resulted in the unstable system... At least that's one theory anyhow...

Last night I used the maxtor powermax utility to do a low level format, and write zero's to the whole drive.

On my next windows install it once again only saw 129gb, at least now I'm back to square one and can follow the proper steps. So once windows was isntalled I applied the 48-bit LBA registry patch. Now I can see the extra 70 gigs. I ran the windows diskpart.exe program to extent the primary partition to use up the unallocated 70gigs and bam, I'm back up to the full 200gb. But I think I did it properly this time and I'm crossing my fingers that everything will be solid this go. I'm gonna test the drive by filling it with data, deleting the data and filling it again. Then if all goes well send the machine back to my friend, and if I ever see it again I can't be held responsible for my actions...

04-28-2005, 01:09 PM	#1 (permalink)
TrevorM Registered User Join Date: Apr 2005 Posts: 2 OS: win 2k	New win2k machine w/ 200gb harddrive keeps getting corrupt I've recently finished building a new machine for a friend (first bad idea). The harddrive is a 200gb maxtor, and the machine is running win2k pro, w/ sp4. At first I had trouble getting it to see more than 129gb. I made a new win2k boot disc with sp4, then it recognized all 200gb. My friend ran the machine for about a week and a half, and as he was copying files to the hd, he started getting write errors saying the drive was corrupt. When he rebooted, after the cmos screen it just went black and said "error loading operating system". I tried to repair the machine using the recovery console, and did fixboot and fixmbr. But didn't have much luck. So I formatted and reinstalled windows. Another aprox week and a half later, while downloading some files he basicly had the same problem. I'm having trouble reviving the machine, and think I'm giong to be forced to format and reinstall once again!! Any idea why this keeps happening? I ran the powermax scan on the drive and it reports it to be error free. Could my friend have gotten a boot sector virus twice? Or is it more likely a configuraton problem? One thing that I never did after installing windows was to edit the registry to enable 48-bit LBA support. I had assumed that since win2k sp4 recongized all 200gb of the drive, I didn't have to add the registry value for lba support. Think that could be the problem? I'm never building a computer for someone again... :(

04-28-2005, 04:42 PM	#2 (permalink)
Evil Genius Registered User Join Date: Dec 2004 Posts: 37 OS: Windows xp	It sounds like you might actually have a RAM memory issue which is causing the operating system and other programs to become corrupt. I believe that this might be the most likely issue, you can run a memory diagnostic to double check your RAM memory chips, microsoft has one posted here http://oca.microsoft.com/en/windiag.asp If everything checks out then it might be the IDE cables, replace it or switch them to test it out. If its not, then it can either be the hard drive itself or motherboard...but a motherboard issue is very unlikely, but possible nonetheless. Hope this helps post back and let us know how you made out !!

04-29-2005, 07:50 AM	#3 (permalink)
TrevorM Registered User Join Date: Apr 2005 Posts: 2 OS: win 2k	Thanks for the suggestion, I hadn't really considered that as I've never really run into memory issues before. I bought the mobo, cpu, and memory as an upgrade bundle, so I'd assume everything must be compatible with each other. But I guess you never know when you get a bad stick of ram. I'll definitley keep it in mind. I think the problem I was having may have been due to me messing up the install in the first place. When I installed the 1st time, I didn't know about the 129gb limitation and ended up converting the drive to a dynamic drive. Applied the windows 48-bit LBA registry patch, created a partition and formatted the unused space. Then I tried to merge the partitions. Now... You cannot merge partitions on a dynamic disk, that is the system boot drive. So... I reinstalled windows, this time the windows installer saw the full 200gb. But I'm thinking what I esentially did was fool windows into allowing me to merge partitions on a dynamic drive, when it shouldn't have let me, which resulted in the unstable system... At least that's one theory anyhow... Last night I used the maxtor powermax utility to do a low level format, and write zero's to the whole drive. On my next windows install it once again only saw 129gb, at least now I'm back to square one and can follow the proper steps. So once windows was isntalled I applied the 48-bit LBA registry patch. Now I can see the extra 70 gigs. I ran the windows diskpart.exe program to extent the primary partition to use up the unallocated 70gigs and bam, I'm back up to the full 200gb. But I think I did it properly this time and I'm crossing my fingers that everything will be solid this go. I'm gonna test the drive by filling it with data, deleting the data and filling it again. Then if all goes well send the machine back to my friend, and if I ever see it again I can't be held responsible for my actions...