Bad Hard Drive? Or XP?

[nathen 0]

XP running on a Sony Vaio desktop will not start. Yesterday, soon after installing a driver from SOYO for their memory stick reader, the system abruptly restarted. I should have done system restore then, but i didn't.

 

Now, the sys won't boot up.

Safe mode in any option does not boot up.

I did a fixboot from the system recovery console, and that did not help.

I went to reinstall XP and the disk check stops at 86% on disk C.

From the Recovery console, DSKCHK stopped at 73% and stayed there for 15 minutes...then i did a hard power restart.

 

If i try for a normal boot, the system goes to check the "file system on C:" automatically (I do get the WINDOWS XP startup screen). In checking the disk here, it says that the pagefile.sys entry contains a nonvalid link. And the size of the pagefile.sys entry is not valid. However, in this mode, the disk checking completes. It says the "dump72bc.tmp is cross-linked on allocation unit 2328964." Then it just stops and hangs there. And again, I need to power down.

 

Any HELP or suggestions??? Thanks!!

 

Nathen

[Sampson 0]

For whatever reason the file allocation is reporting a crosslink. This was not uncommon in the days when Fat32 and Fat16 were the underlaying file systems of Windows. I don't know that I've ever seen this with NTFS, but there are a lot of things that surprise me with Windows.

 

Go into the Bios and change the drive to boot from the C:\ drive (or hard drive) to your CD drive. Put your Systems disk in the CD and try to reformat and re-install XP. If this doesn't work, you probably need a new hard drive.

[nathen 0]

Hi Sampson,

 

Thanks. My C drive is FAT32, not NTFS...I think i kept it as FAT32 since that was what MS recommended for a boot drive. Anyway, when i try to reinstall XP from the CD (booted) it hangs up at the initial part where it says it will check the disk for errors. I'll try again, but it could be the drive is shot!

 

Let me know if you have any further comments now that you know it is FAT32.

 

Thanks again,

 

Nathen

[jmmijo 1]

Hmm, the fact that the filesystem is FAT32 is most likely the cause of why it got cross-linked.

 

No Microsoft does *not* recommend using FAT32 unless it's a special case, like moving the drive to another system that only runs Windows 9x for instance

 

You maybe able to correct the issues my using the CHKDSK command with the following options

/F /R which will force a fix. It will however ask you to schedule this during the next reboot. Do so then reboot the machine and see what happens.

 

 

 

[Sampson 0]

Try what jmmijo suggests, but what I would add is that BEFORE you do that go to Run and type msconfig . If it comes up, under the General tab click on Diagnostic Startup . If it asks to reboot don't. Then, do what jmmijo says. Then, reboot. This gives XP's form of chkdsk breathing room. And, it might take a while.

 

If that fails, because this is a Fat32 drive, if you can find an old win95 or 98 machine around, make a bootable floppy and put fdisk on it along with format, chkdsk and perhaps sys, then you can run fdisk on the drive which might "kill" the errors. Then, you could try to reinstall XP.

 

You may still have to replace that drive. Sony Vaio's are kind of proprietary about their hardware. You might check to see if any drive replacement will work first. Some of these manufacturers do funny things to make sure their drives will only work with their machines. And, the opposite, their machines won't work properly with any drives not their own.

[nathen 0]

Thanks Sampson and jmmijo.

 

The only place I can get a command prompt is in System Recovery Console, and msconfig is not supported there. (I don't have the "automatic" system recovery disks.)

 

I ran CHKDSK /R only because /F is not supported by the Sys Recovery Console.

 

In the XP setup, I have the option to reformat the drive or convert it to NTFS. I am thinking to try the conversion first, then if that doesn't work, reformat it. If that doesn't work, it's probably time for a new drive.

 

I have a slave drive 160Gb on the system that is probably okay (wishful thinking since that is where my data is). I tried to install XP on this directly, but the install program still tries to check the C: drive.

 

I think a new hard drive won't be any big deal, but from my experience with Sony, i will need to install a bunch of little unusual drivers and programs to get the system to work properly with the Sony hardware.

 

THanks!

[nathen 0]

Thanks Sampson and jmmijo.

 

The only place I can get a command prompt is in System Recovery Console, and msconfig is not supported there. (I don't have the "automatic" system recovery disks.)

 

I ran CHKDSK /R only because /F is not supported by the Sys Recovery Console.

 

In the XP setup, I have the option to reformat the drive or convert it to NTFS. I am thinking to try the conversion first, then if that doesn't work, reformat it. If that doesn't work, it's probably time for a new drive.

 

I have a slave drive 160Gb on the system that is probably okay (wishful thinking since that is where my data is). I tried to install XP on this directly, but the install program still tries to check the C: drive.

 

I think a new hard drive won't be any big deal, but from my experience with Sony, i will need to install a bunch of little unusual drivers and programs to get the system to work properly with the Sony hardware.

 

THanks!

[nathen 0]

Thanks Sampson and jmmijo.

 

The only place I can get a command prompt is in System Recovery Console, and msconfig is not supported there. (I don't have the "automatic" system recovery disks.)

 

I ran CHKDSK /R only because /F is not supported by the Sys Recovery Console.

 

In the XP setup, I have the option to reformat the drive or convert it to NTFS. I am thinking to try the conversion first, then if that doesn't work, reformat it. If that doesn't work, it's probably time for a new drive.

 

I have a slave drive 160Gb on the system that is probably okay (wishful thinking since that is where my data is). I tried to install XP on this directly, but the install program still tries to check the C: drive.

 

I think a new hard drive won't be any big deal, but from my experience with Sony, i will need to install a bunch of little unusual drivers and programs to get the system to work properly with the Sony hardware.

 

THanks!