Sorry, very long post.
Basicly, getting a S.M.A.R.T HD error on start.
My Computer
HDD
Samsung spinpoint 160Gb 7200rpm UDMA 133 8Mb Cache
3 partitions. 5 Gb for the OS (FAT 32), 2 other partitions (extended, NTFS for other programmes)
Mobo.
MSI KT4AV (FCC MS6712 Ver:10A)
RAM. VM512Mb DDR PC133
Video card. MSI FX5200 128Mb (FCC 8907 Ver:2.00)
New case and power supply. Suntek 300W approved for AMD and Pentium CPU's.
CPU. AMD Athlon XP 2100+ 1.76Ghz. Mastercooler fan.
OS. Windows XP Service pack 2.
CD Burner
DVD player
Floppy drive
All built and checked in January.
AVG AV software, updated 28th July.
Zone Alarm firewall.
Webwasher classic. Rarely turned off.
Downloaded latest patches from Microsoft on Thursday.
Every thing had been running reasonably well. Very rare minor glitches. Haven’t been downloading any thing dodgy.
Set the computer to do a defrag on the C: (only 5Gb, set up for XP OS) to run during the night. It didn’t seem to complete it, lots of red showing but I can’t remember what the text said.
On Saturday, I tried to start it. Not happy with doing that. Ended up in safe mode but not really making any head way. It gave the impression that the hard drive was dodgy. I gave up in disgust and returned to the safe haven of the Mac lil iBook and some G&T’s.
Today Sunday I braced myself for battle.
This is a summary of what I did and the messages I got.
Turned on FRED.
POST is completed just fine.
Then S.M.A.R.T. status bad, back up and replace. Press F1 to continue. (Not a good sign is it?)
In DOS, given several options to start. (On Sat had tried Safe mode etc). Just told it to start.
I got this error message.
Windows could not start because files are missing or corrupt.
\windows\system32\config\system
Ok. I can take a hint.
So I thought I would try the Windows Installation disc.
It happily gets stuck into it and then screeches to a halt at “preparing installation”
It said Setup cannot locate the Windows installation you want to upgrade. Contact system administrator. F3 to quit.
Oooooh not good.
The FRED reboots. (during every reboot get the SMART warning and F1 to continue)
I select the normal windows start, not the set up option.
This time it says “can’t start – File missing or corrupt <Windows root>\system32\ntoskrnl.exe
Oooo Kayyy…
The blue screen appears again.
It suggests to run CHKDSK /F
Hard drive corruption. Check for viruses.
***STOP: 0x0000007B (0xF898963C, 0xC0000034, 0x00000000, 0x00000000)
I didn’t get that string again.
Reboot time.
Going through the above, I go through the options and get to a blue screen saying that it wants to check the C drive.
This takes a loooooong time.
It checks the file system on C: It identifies the file system as FAT 32 and then checks the file and folders. It has done this several times in other reboots. Every time it tries to replace bad clusters.
An eg. Replacing bad clusters in file \FOUND.001\FILE0024.CHK
(many more as well) another eg \$WIN_NT$.~BT.\1_INT1.N1_
Then file and folder verification complete.
Then goes and verifies free space.
Part of that text is 235500Kb in bad sectors.
After that it goes to the normal “Welcome” window and loads up normally albeit slowly.
Riiiiiiiiight.
I rerun the antivirus softwear to see if there’s any thing there. (It won’t connect to the net). I rerun Defrag. It works just fine and doesn’t appear to show any problems. I do as many checks as I can but can’t find any thing obvious. I wanted to run ScanDisk but it’s missing. (??)
So I decide to do as it asks. I go to DOS and use CHKDSK. It reported problems with the file system.
“Size of \WINDOWS\SYSTEM32\CONFIG\DEFAULT.LOG entry is not valid”
Then I asked it to CHKDSK /F (F for Fix) I restarted FRED.
Got the F1 (HD SMART failure)
Select the normal windows (Dos window)
Again, it checks the file system on C:
Reports File system no problems
Then starts checking the disk for consistencies (as it has done every time). Verifying files and folders.
This takes a looooong time. It finds and fixes what it can.
Again, it starts windows but it is very slow.
I do more searching, I find Disk Management in Admin. I open it but it says that every thing is fine. “healthy”
I ask it to fix problems. It looked like a Windows version of CHKDSK /F
I restart it.
Exactly the same result….
Replacing bad clusters in file \pagefile sys error reading folder (null)
Moves to files and folders.
At this point I go downstairs and watch Top Gear.
The Earth cools some more and when I go back upstairs to see what’s happening. Boring old Windows screen saver and I can’t wake up FRED. No HD light on either (sounds like me most days
I turn the bloody thing off and go back downstairs to my trusty iBook and type out this veritable War and Peace….