[Highly-Annoyed]

High all,

I just started a new installation of Windows 2000 on a computer and 96% of the way through the hard drive format that the installation does, it stopped. It has been on 96% for the last 20 minutes and I don't think it's going to change now. I think that the computer has (for whatever reason) frozen. Now, does this mean that my HDD is now corrupted, or will it be OK? If it is corrupted, can it be fixed for less than £20.00?

I haven't turned off the computer yet, as I am hoping against all reason that the format will start up again. I sincerely doubt that it will though...

Appreciate any help.

Thanks!

Highly-Annoyed

 

[phubeone]

is this a new hard drive or used? Give us the specs of the PC so we can try to gauge how fast it would take to format the HD. We need the size of the hard drive, SATA or ATA, RAID, RPM on HD? Processor speed? RAM? How long does it take for the status to get to 96%?

It just looks like a bad hard drive to me but I can't say it is for sure until more research is done. In my head it's saying that the HD is dead or bad and I know that's not what you want to hear. Usually problems don't happen during format unless the drive is bad but before making that assumption let's do a few things to make sure:

- Is the drive brand new? If it is, what size is it? If it is over 120gigs (i'm just saying) then you may need to upgrade the BIOS of the mobo for it to recognize the full size.

- Are you setting this up in a RAID? If so, there should be instructions on how to set this up. What kind of HD do you have?

- You may need to install the RAID configuration before you process to the install/format process. It will prompt you to press F6 when the blue screen comes up for the windows 2k/xp installation.

Provide us with this info and we'll try to help you as best as we can and provide you with an answer.

 

[Highly-Annoyed]

is this a new hard drive or used? Give us the specs of the PC so we can try to gauge how fast it would take to format the HD. We need the size of the hard drive, SATA or ATA, RAID, RPM on HD? Processor speed? RAM? How long does it take for the status to get to 96%?

It just looks like a bad hard drive to me but I can't say it is for sure until more research is done. In my head it's saying that the HD is dead or bad and I know that's not what you want to hear. Usually problems don't happen during format unless the drive is bad but before making that assumption let's do a few things to make sure:

- Is the drive brand new? If it is, what size is it? If it is over 120gigs (i'm just saying) then you may need to upgrade the BIOS of the mobo for it to recognize the full size.

- Are you setting this up in a RAID? If so, there should be instructions on how to set this up. What kind of HD do you have?

- You may need to install the RAID configuration before you process to the install/format process. It will prompt you to press F6 when the blue screen comes up for the windows 2k/xp installation.

Provide us with this info and we'll try to help you as best as we can and provide you with an answer.

Wow. That's a lot of questions. :smile: It's an old computer system. 850MHz P3. 128MB @ PC100. The HDD is ATA100, 20GB, 2MB Buffer, used. It might be bad, that is a possibility. Had it working previously though, so maybe not. It's being connected to the motherboard via a PCI IDE controller card, so it can function at ATA100, as the motherboard's onboard IDE controller only supports ATA66. There are 3 fans, 2 optical drives, 2 HDD (inc the one that failed to fully format) 1 floppy drive. My PSU only has 15A on its +12V rail, so maybe it locked up because of power shortage. I will try the install again (if it will attempt a re-install) with fewer devices connected to the PSU. Yes, I did install the driver for the PCI IDE controller card when the Win2k install asked me to press F6. Although I've got two HDD in the system, there is no RAID set-up.

Highly-Annoyed

 

[Highly-Annoyed]

OK, just a quick up-date...

It did reinitialise another install/format when attempted and this time got to 97% before freezing... lol

Maybe if I select a smaller partition size, it will make it to 100%. I'll give it a try if it will actually work a second time...

Highly-Annoyed

 

[Highly-Annoyed]

Final Up-Date.

I got it to work. I just restarted the computer and set the partition to a smaller amount and it worked. I guess there must be a corrupted part of the HDD, or something similar, but anyway, it finally worked.

Thanks for your help.

Highly-Annoyed

 

[linderman]

Welcome to TSF:

One of your problems may be ram ??? 128meg of ram is NOT going to run Win 2K very stable. I strongly suggest you get 512 / win 2k will run ok then !!

the good news if PC 2100 ram is cheap on ebay !!

regards

joe

 

[Highly-Annoyed]

Welcome to TSF:

One of your problems may be ram ??? 128meg of ram is NOT going to run Win 2K very stable. I strongly suggest you get 512 / win 2k will run ok then !!

the good news if PC 2100 ram is cheap on ebay !!

regards

joe

Hi Joe,

Yeah, 128MB of RAM isn't great for Win2k, but it's twice the recommended minimum and will suffice in the short term. The computer in question only uses PC133 SDRAM (Not DDR) so I would guess it'll be even cheaper to upgrade it on eBay!! :wink:

I have three computers (inc the one in question) and my other Win2k machine has 512MB of PC2700. That machine is quite a bit faster, even with Norton weighing it down. :smile:

Unfortunately, my previous "final update" is not as final as I first thought... Although the format went through OK and the installation completed, when Win2k was starting up for the 1st time it locked up... It kept doing this over and over and didn't even get to the desktop... I'm going to take out the ATA100 HDD I have been trying to install Win2k on and also take out the PCI IDE controller card as well. I will try and install on the ATA66 HDD already in the machine, hopefully it will work... :sad:

Using the ATA66 HDD will negatively impact upon performance, but if it actually works, hopefully it wont be that noticeable... I'm only going to use this machine to crunch work units for climateprediction.net anyway, so HDD performance isn't a paramount concern...

Anyway, thanks for replying and if it works I will post here to say so. I'll probably post here if it doesn't work as well!! -razz:

Thanks,

Highly-Annoyed

 

[Volt-Schwibe]

what i have done in the past, is watch it while formatting, the first time it tries to recover lost sectors, i stop it, and consider that the end of the good part of the disk.

then, say it happens at 96% of a format, i destroy the partition and make on that uses 90% of the disk.

then it normally will format.

keep in mind, even if it manages to get past "attempting to recover lost sectors" it does indicate a bad spot on the disk, so you don't want to count it from when it freezes, you want to count it at the first bad sector.

so if it only goes to 30% before hitting a bad sector, then that's the end of the good part.