[SOLVED] Odd bug...

Ancient · 11-30-2008, 04:19 PM

Ok so... im not a noob but not a pro... just telling

So here is the issue...
Friend brought me his laptop "TARGA Traveler" (name of it) so i can reinstall windows XP...
Well i formatted previous partition where the windows was installed (it was C:)...
There were 3 more partitions besides C that were kinda odd...
one was "Recover" which had 4GB,
other was Ext3 with some sh$t and was ~95MB,
other was some partition with drivers and some sh$t that was around 1GB....
So i formatted C and installed WinXP SP2,
it installed well then,
friend asked me to split C into 2 partitions one being C with windows and other for downloads and stuff...
so i did...
Oh i used Acronis Disk Director...
so at first i set the C partition size to 20GB and remaining space made into new partition...
when the acronis started resizing it said "Operation error:
invalid partition size" ...
well i stopped the operation and retried it...
it gave me same error...
then i changed size of partition to 21,**GB and it completed normally all operations...
Well friend told me to loose those Ext3 and recovery partitions...
well i thought what the heck...
recovery...
why i need that so i formatted all those 3 partitions
then merged them with one that was created after resizing C...
so i got 2 partitions, one being C and other D...
it ddint give out any errors or anything...
Then i started installing applications i installed usual stuff...
drivers, antivir, firefox etc...
but then i wanted to see his gfx card's properties
so i installed EVEREST Ultimate...
well it run normally then when i clicked on GPU card or soething... it hang up,
the app i mean not system...
well i did usual end process but that didnt work..
i tryed to restart system but the system hang up
so i had to shut down the laptop...
after starting it up again I couldnt enter Windows...
it just hangs on this "loading" logo...
i restarted again..
same thing...
i thought maybe EVEREST somehow damaged the system so insterted my winXP CD in an attempt to recover the system...
but it hang up at "Startup is loading Windows" and it wont go anywhere from here....
I have Vista DVD so i inserted it and got same thing...
Even Ubuntu wont load,
all systems just hang....
Well i have this Acronis live CD.. so i insert it and format the C partition in hope that itll resolve the issue...
but it didnt...

I really have no idea what happened was it EVEREST
or those 3 partitions that i destroyed...

System props:
CPU AMD Turion 64 mobile tech /
1024MB RAM /
ATI Radeon Mobility x700 128mb VRAM

Please help cuz im not really in the mood of buying him new laptop...

**blah789** · 12-01-2008, 05:38 AM

Which Targa Traveller model are you using?
ext3 = they probably had Linux on there
Before you format anything you should probably backup your important data (documents, e-mails, address book, pictures, videos, etc.) to flash drive, CD/DVD, etc.
Does your friend have a recovery CD or DVD? If not, that means the recovery partitions were the only copies of the OS (XP or Vista or whatever it was) that they had. Normally if they wanted to restore to factory settings, they'd press a certain key sequence in BIOS and the system would use the recovery partition to restore the computer to the way it was when they bought it (of course all new programs and data added since then would be gone). Anyway if your recovery partition is gone, sometimes you can buy recovery media (DVD or CD) from the manufacturer for your model for a small fee.
I think 20GB is a bit small for XP if you plan to install programs and/or games to run in the future, or you plan to download stuff. If you're doing very light computing (e-mail, web surfing) and not much else, 20GB might be OK.
I'm not very familiar with everest, so can't give you advice there. Other forum members know a lot more about it, so stay tuned.
As for finding drivers for the laptop, go here
http://www.service.targa.co.uk/
On the left, pick your model, then click on the downloads tab to the right. If there are no XP drivers, you can sometimes download the Vista drivers, extract them with 7-zip, and look at the inf or readme or txt files and find out more about the driver. It may turn out the driver also works with XP, but if not, you can google for an XP version once you know more about the device.

Ancient · 12-01-2008, 07:54 AM

Ok, model (S/N) is C32520012675
And i have all recovery DVD's etc... but they wont work... naturally removing the "Recovery" partition wont damage the system, since its not vital... so it shouldnt damage in any way...
But the thing is whenever i insert any OS disk or those recovery DVD's it wont do anything... as i said it hangs up after it presumably copied files onto HDD to expand...
Im thinking that somehow the HDD got damaged, i mean to MBR maybe... after the system lagged becuz of EVEREST... I had to shut down, maybe in that time something happened to the HDD...

Also i tried running DOS and it wont run as well....
As i said i dont have anything installed on this laptop at this moment... so i cant fix anything from windows... can you please suggest any application (bootable) that i can use to scan the disk or repair MBR etc...

Sparky09 · 12-01-2008, 08:07 AM

Well.. can always try the old fdisk and then format and start all over or slave the drive to another machine and write zero's to it if you wanna get really clean. If it's a software issue that'll resolve it and if it's a bad hard drive that's just now ironically causing issues then you'll find out if the writing zero's doesnt make a difference. Hmmm..

dai · 12-01-2008, 08:54 AM

the recovery partition works in conjunction with the recovery disks
you usually put the recovery disk in and hit one of the F keys
if you clean install
make sure you have the drivers
make sure you have an oem disk with which to use his serial key with
clear the drive with killdisk then format and install
http://www.killdisk.com/downloadfree.htm
don't clean install without the correct windows disk as his key will not work and activate on a different version

Ancient · 12-01-2008, 10:34 AM

Ok small update... friend brought USB HDD and i plugged it in and tryed to run win install again... well this time it detected all partitions and installed winxp (not on USB HDD). I installed all drivers and run CHKDSK which detected a BAD sector 4KB in size... attempting to fix it now.... any ideas ?

Ancient · 12-01-2008, 11:27 AM

Oh... well.... Im sorry guys, but id have to close this topic, cince i resolved the problem... It was BAD sector on HDD..... I gave him his laptop with a warning about what BAD represents... but the system is working and so on....

But id love to hear how can u counter BAD sectors... I know u can run CHKDSK but is there more advanced method.. ???

dai · 12-01-2008, 09:26 PM

sometimes clearing the drive with killdisk or a similar program will fix
but it is a good idea to replace the drive bad sectors tend t breed like rabbits

11-30-2008, 04:19 PM	#1 (permalink)
Ancient Registered User Join Date: Nov 2008 Posts: 6 OS: XP SP3	[SOLVED] Odd bug... Ok so... im not a noob but not a pro... just telling So here is the issue... Friend brought me his laptop "TARGA Traveler" (name of it) so i can reinstall windows XP... Well i formatted previous partition where the windows was installed (it was C:)... There were 3 more partitions besides C that were kinda odd... one was "Recover" which had 4GB, other was Ext3 with some sh$t and was ~95MB, other was some partition with drivers and some sh$t that was around 1GB.... So i formatted C and installed WinXP SP2, it installed well then, friend asked me to split C into 2 partitions one being C with windows and other for downloads and stuff... so i did... Oh i used Acronis Disk Director... so at first i set the C partition size to 20GB and remaining space made into new partition... when the acronis started resizing it said "Operation error: invalid partition size" ... well i stopped the operation and retried it... it gave me same error... then i changed size of partition to 21,*GB and it completed normally all operations... Well friend told me to loose those Ext3 and recovery partitions... well i thought what the heck... recovery... why i need that so i formatted all those 3 partitions then merged them with one that was created after resizing C... so i got 2 partitions, one being C and other D... it ddint give out any errors or anything... Then i started installing applications i installed usual stuff... drivers, antivir, firefox etc... but then i wanted to see his gfx card's properties so i installed EVEREST Ultimate... well it run normally then when i clicked on GPU card or soething... it hang up, the app i mean not system... well i did usual end process but that didnt work.. i tryed to restart system but the system hang up so i had to shut down the laptop... after starting it up again I couldnt enter Windows... it just hangs on this "loading" logo... i restarted again.. same thing... i thought maybe EVEREST somehow damaged the system so insterted my winXP CD in an attempt to recover the system... but it hang up at "Startup is loading Windows" and it wont go anywhere from here.... I have Vista DVD so i inserted it and got same thing... Even Ubuntu wont load, all systems just hang.... Well i have this Acronis live CD.. so i insert it and format the C partition in hope that itll resolve the issue... but it didnt... I really have no idea what happened was it EVEREST or those 3 partitions that i destroyed... System props: CPU AMD Turion 64 mobile tech / 1024MB RAM / ATI Radeon Mobility x700 128mb VRAM Please help cuz im not really in the mood of buying him new laptop... Last edited by dai; 12-01-2008 at 08:43 AM. Reason: to make easier to read*

12-01-2008, 05:38 AM	#2 (permalink)
blah789 TSF Enthusiast Join Date: Aug 2008 Posts: 1,874 OS: Windows 2000 SP4 and Windows XP SP3	Re: Odd bug... Which Targa Traveller model are you using? ext3 = they probably had Linux on there Before you format anything you should probably backup your important data (documents, e-mails, address book, pictures, videos, etc.) to flash drive, CD/DVD, etc. Does your friend have a recovery CD or DVD? If not, that means the recovery partitions were the only copies of the OS (XP or Vista or whatever it was) that they had. Normally if they wanted to restore to factory settings, they'd press a certain key sequence in BIOS and the system would use the recovery partition to restore the computer to the way it was when they bought it (of course all new programs and data added since then would be gone). Anyway if your recovery partition is gone, sometimes you can buy recovery media (DVD or CD) from the manufacturer for your model for a small fee. I think 20GB is a bit small for XP if you plan to install programs and/or games to run in the future, or you plan to download stuff. If you're doing very light computing (e-mail, web surfing) and not much else, 20GB might be OK. I'm not very familiar with everest, so can't give you advice there. Other forum members know a lot more about it, so stay tuned. As for finding drivers for the laptop, go here http://www.service.targa.co.uk/ On the left, pick your model, then click on the downloads tab to the right. If there are no XP drivers, you can sometimes download the Vista drivers, extract them with 7-zip, and look at the inf or readme or txt files and find out more about the driver. It may turn out the driver also works with XP, but if not, you can google for an XP version once you know more about the device.

12-01-2008, 07:54 AM	#3 (permalink)
Ancient Registered User Join Date: Nov 2008 Posts: 6 OS: XP SP3	Re: Odd bug... Ok, model (S/N) is C32520012675 And i have all recovery DVD's etc... but they wont work... naturally removing the "Recovery" partition wont damage the system, since its not vital... so it shouldnt damage in any way... But the thing is whenever i insert any OS disk or those recovery DVD's it wont do anything... as i said it hangs up after it presumably copied files onto HDD to expand... Im thinking that somehow the HDD got damaged, i mean to MBR maybe... after the system lagged becuz of EVEREST... I had to shut down, maybe in that time something happened to the HDD... Also i tried running DOS and it wont run as well.... As i said i dont have anything installed on this laptop at this moment... so i cant fix anything from windows... can you please suggest any application (bootable) that i can use to scan the disk or repair MBR etc... Last edited by Ancient; 12-01-2008 at 08:02 AM.

12-01-2008, 08:07 AM	#4 (permalink)
Sparky09 Registered User Join Date: Sep 2008 Location: Ontario Posts: 78 OS: XP Home SP2	Re: Odd bug... Well.. can always try the old fdisk and then format and start all over or slave the drive to another machine and write zero's to it if you wanna get really clean. If it's a software issue that'll resolve it and if it's a bad hard drive that's just now ironically causing issues then you'll find out if the writing zero's doesnt make a difference. Hmmm..

12-01-2008, 08:54 AM	#5 (permalink)
dai Manager, Hardware Forums Join Date: Jul 2004 Location: west australia Posts: 53,589 OS: vista 32x 64x ultimate retail	Re: Odd bug... the recovery partition works in conjunction with the recovery disks you usually put the recovery disk in and hit one of the F keys if you clean install make sure you have the drivers make sure you have an oem disk with which to use his serial key with clear the drive with killdisk then format and install http://www.killdisk.com/downloadfree.htm don't clean install without the correct windows disk as his key will not work and activate on a different version __________________

12-01-2008, 10:34 AM	#6 (permalink)
Ancient Registered User Join Date: Nov 2008 Posts: 6 OS: XP SP3	Re: Odd bug... Ok small update... friend brought USB HDD and i plugged it in and tryed to run win install again... well this time it detected all partitions and installed winxp (not on USB HDD). I installed all drivers and run CHKDSK which detected a BAD sector 4KB in size... attempting to fix it now.... any ideas ?

12-01-2008, 11:27 AM	#7 (permalink)
Ancient Registered User Join Date: Nov 2008 Posts: 6 OS: XP SP3	Re: Odd bug... Oh... well.... Im sorry guys, but id have to close this topic, cince i resolved the problem... It was BAD sector on HDD..... I gave him his laptop with a warning about what BAD represents... but the system is working and so on.... But id love to hear how can u counter BAD sectors... I know u can run CHKDSK but is there more advanced method.. ???

12-01-2008, 09:26 PM	#8 (permalink)
dai Manager, Hardware Forums Join Date: Jul 2004 Location: west australia Posts: 53,589 OS: vista 32x 64x ultimate retail	Re: Odd bug... sometimes clearing the drive with killdisk or a similar program will fix but it is a good idea to replace the drive bad sectors tend t breed like rabbits __________________