File Corruption getting me down....(Hardware advice please)

Right chaps and chapesses...

for the 4th or 5th time in 18 months, my pc has tried to load up, but come up with this message:

D\Windows\System32\Config\System is corrupted. You cna try and repair this file blah blah blah...

Bottom line, what causes this? rubbish HD (I have a seagate) or somethign else?

I was also wondering if anyone knew how to correct the problem withouta disk format....

Many thanks

Lloyd



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 02/12/2007 08:29PM by GLD.

I had the exact same problem and never got round to fixing my old hard drive, its still frozen in time with all my stuff on it - dead annoying!

I remember doing tons of reading about it and there was a way to use windows discs to repair the issue - the reason I could never do it was because my drive was a SATA that suddently when windows tried to repair it with the cd, randomly decided to not recognise the hard drive being attached.

To cap that off, it needed serial ATA drivers from a floppy that were already installed, but just again decided to stop working somehow.

I never fixed it - I even tried plugging it as a slave drive to another pc to try and extract my uni data but it froze the other guys computer up LOL!


Jenson drives it like he owns it; Lewis drives it like he stole it

Normally not the hard drive (though run the Seatools to elimate it anyway) - in my experience it's down to a PSU being sucky, and IDE/SATA cables can always go wrong.

For a strange reason, I found booting into Safe Mode, then rebooting normally cleared the problem, though of course it's only a temporary fix. Other means are by booting from the Windows XP (or 2000 if that's what the system is) CD, and going into the Recovery Console, doing the normal chkdsk /f and if necessary FIXBOOT and FIXMBR.

//edit: Danm, couldn't you hook it up to your new PC and get the data off it?

//edit: OK Gav, we'll read full posts before replying, shall we? A USB adapter normally sorts that Danm, if the data's important. I've got one of these: [www.eksitdata.com], and it's a life-saver - can also hook up laptop hard drives if necessary



Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 02/08/2007 04:27PM by gav.

Thought it was hardware...new HD for me it is then!! Grr along with all the other upgrades i was planning hehe

Oops ddnt see your post there gav...

I tried all the things that you suggested...it wouldnt boot into safe mode at all...and i tried using the recovery console, to no avail...

I also suspected a sucky PSU...because i have one lol...

funny enough I was just going to post something similar to GLD's problem, when I saw this post.

Basically, hard drives are lasting about 6 months before dying. First three were Seagate's IDE's and the current one is a Maxtor SATA drive. With the first three i started getting boot errors like GLD and over a period of probably a couple of weeks they errors got more and more frequent until the point when the drives were unusable.

The current Maxtor drive has just died without any warning at all. I turned the computer on this morning and it took ages to boot windows. when Windows eventually booted it was running really slow and then all of a sudden blue screen of death and then rebooted. There was a funny clicking sound coming from the hard drive aswell. Chkdsk tries to to check the drive at startup but crashes after USN_VERYFIED.

What could be causing the drives to be dying so quickly? Is there any way to repair my SATA drive, it was quite expensive and there is about 20Gb of GP4 stuff on it which I don't have backup's of (stupid I know).

Cheers for any help.

paul..

airefresco Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> What could be causing the drives to be dying so
> quickly? Is there any way to repair my SATA
> drive, it was quite expensive and there is about
> 20Gb of GP4 stuff on it which I don't have
> backup's of (stupid I know).

It's not going to get repaired without spending hundreds on a specialist recovery company.

Best bet would be to get an external SATA-USB enclosure, an IcyBox for instance. Nothing guaranteed at all, but they're a bit more robust, and at £20, it's most practical way of potentially rescuing something. I've got a broken 400GB Seagate here at work in one, still working over USB.

As for causes, I'd plump for the usual cheap PSU not being up to the job - dirty power is always going to kill hard drives, and it sounds like you've got a particularly bad one. It's also not beyond the realms of possibility that the power supply to you house or room is poor quality, and a PSU won't be able to do anything with that. The only other thing which could cause such frequent issues is an overclocked PC without locking down the PCI frequency, though that would just cause data corruption normally, not loud clunking sounds.

Oh, and don't buy Maxtors - they're renowned for failing after a year or so. Seagates have been solid up until the most recent (7200.10) releases. Western Digital are by far and away the most solid drives I've used (yet to have a failure in 9 drives, 6 of which I still use daily), but Samsung SpinPoints are probably the best when it comes to noise (or lack of) and performance.

Thanks Gav. I tried one of my old IDE drives last night and managed to boot windows and was able to copy the data from the SATA driver, so I'm a bit happier now.

You're probably right about the power, that's what I was thinking. The power to my place isn't the best.

If it is dirty power (as opposed to a cheap and nasty power supply unit), then it may be cheaper in the long-run to get a uninterruptible Power Supply (UPS), as well as potentially not losing data. Just avoid the Belkin one if you do.

Gav I really should read posts more carefully. Just been out and bought a Seagate 7200.10, Doh!!!

I think I am going to invest in a UPS and I think i might get a new PSU aswell. They had some Tacens Valeo Pro 600 Psu's in the shop i got my drive from. Ever heard of them? I'm going to do a search on the old t'ineterweb in bit.

cheers for your help.

paul..

Just been looking around, what do you reckon to this HD??

[www.ebuyer.com]

Good deal? Or better out there?

Am looking for something around the 400gb mark so i've got plenty in the tank when i eventually get vista....

Western Digital make good hard drives. I've had one for about 10 years now and hasn't failed me once, though the capacity's a lil limited (15 GB!).

---

Everyone knows that million-to-one chances happen 9 times out of 10; indeed, it's a common requirement in fairy tales. If the human didn't have to overcome huge odds, what would be the point? Terry Pratchett - The Science Of Discworld

GPGSL S5 Race driver for IED.

Well the price is a bit of an attraction so i think ill go ahead and add it to my shopping list...

And i was thinking about this power supply:

[www.scan.co.uk]

One thing though...the HD is SATA II, how can i tell if this Power supply has the necessary connectors? The spec says it has 4 SATA - does that mean it is incompatible?

or maybe this one:

[www.overclockers.co.uk]

Although i remember Gav saying that Hiper's are starting to develop the habit of explodint ... well dying....hehe



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 02/13/2007 12:51AM by GLD.

SATA1 and SATA2 are connectively identical. 90% of the time even SATA2 disks will work on motherboards that only support SATA1. In some cases (I think it's Seagates) have a jumper to disable SATA2 support for those boards which do have problems with SATA2 drives.

Western Digital have both SATA power connectors and the old Molex style found on IDE drives. You only use one at a time, but the option is there for either.

//edit: the forum I was seeing all the Hiper PSU issues (OcUK) I haven't really visited for a while, so I can't tell you if the problems have cleared up or if Hiper have just joined the ranks of the budget PSUs. It's down to you that one, but if I was to recommend something currently, I couldn't recommend a Hiper.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 02/13/2007 11:39AM by gav.

Fair enough... i shall widen my search for a seasonic and post back when i find something...

How about this?

[www.ebuyer.com]

Dare say if thi looks ok, which i think it does then i am away to the land of credit cardome



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 02/13/2007 12:17PM by GLD.

gav Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> //edit: the forum I was seeing all the Hiper PSU
> issues (OcUK) I haven't really visited for a
> while, so I can't tell you if the problems have
> cleared up or if Hiper have just joined the ranks
> of the budget PSUs. It's down to you that one, but
> if I was to recommend something currently, I
> couldn't recommend a Hiper.

What were the problems Gav? I've got a 580W Hiper and it works OK but I'm a little concerned about some of the voltages. They seem a bit out of line to be safe.

GLD: It's a fiver cheaper at Scan if you wish, though not including delivery - I get free delivery from Scan, so I don't know their postage costs

Unless you have a beast of a system with a load of hard drives, just grab the 430W Seasonic instead.

Or, again from Scan, get the 520W Corsair, which is cheaper than the Seasonic and better (it's made by Seasonic and has some better components). The only draw-back is it's currently out of stock!

If money is an issue, get an FSP instead - they're still very good PSUs, and the 500W is a full £20 cheaper than the 500W Seasonic at Ebuyer. Much more robust than the Hiper and not much more expensive.

MarcL: Safe is within 5%, so chances are it'll be fine. Software can never detect accurate voltages anyway, so I wouldn't be using the likes of ASUSProbe to suggest dodgy volts - get a volt-metre. The problems weren't dodgy volts - it was PSUs literally going pop. It was around October-November IIRC when I looked, so there's a decent chance the problems have gone now. It was probably restricted to a dodgy batch. I wouldn't worry - judging by the frequency of the issues, it will have probably have gone bang by now if it was a dodgy one.

//edit: for grammar

//edit2: adding some more info for MarcL



Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 02/13/2007 02:19PM by gav.

gav Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> MarcL: Safe is within 5%, so chances are it'll be
> fine. Software can never detect accurate voltages
> anyway, so I wouldn't be using the likes of
> ASUSProbe to suggest dodgy volts - get a
> volt-metre. The problems weren't dodgy volts - it
> was PSUs literally going pop. It was around
> October-November IIRC when I looked, so there's a
> decent chance the problems have gone now. It was
> probably restricted to a dodgy batch. I wouldn't
> worry - judging by the frequency of the issues, it
> will have probably have gone bang by now if it was
> a dodgy one.
>
> //edit: for grammar
>
> //edit2: adding some more info for MarcL

Cheers Gav. This Hiper is about 13 months old so I doubt its one of the dodgy batch. How would I use the voltmeter to test the PSU? I'm using Everest, is that known for being accurate or not? Will the BIOS display the voltages? Would that be a more reliable way to check?

It can't be accurate - all it can do is report what the sensors give it. It's purely down to the software to interpret the data it receives. Even a manufacturers own tool is never 100% accurate, and that goes for temperatures too.

No idea how to test the volts - probably similar to one of those tools electricians use for detecting cables in walls. It's not something I often do

Stop worrying about it - Hipers were great value for money, so it's not about to exploderise*.

* if it does, then that is purely down to fate or pouring coffee over your PC. You can hold me responsible for the former. I'm not buying or replacing anything though.

//edit: GLD, the Seasonics are on offer on Scan (Today Only) if that's of any use to you... seems the 500W S12 has also come back into stock between the time of my post above and this edit...



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 02/13/2007 02:31PM by gav.