Hello Rachel,
From your description I would suggest that you have a hard drive
formatting problem.
With regard to the advice that you should defragment your drive using
the XP defragmenter. The advice is wrong....that program ONLY defragments
files and more often than not causes a large number of free space
fragments....something that papajohn failed to understand recently when he
showed that he could not run the now industry standard drive defragmenter
which does defrag the free space as well as the files. The program is
PerfectDisk from RAXCO....
In your case, a CRC error indicates a bad save. Windows first saves the
file and then confirms that the save was good (This is a very basic
description by the way) by comparing something called a checksum. A Failure
in your circumstances would indicate that there is a problem with....either
the hard disk platter (The magnetic medium that actually stores the data) OR
the cable connection between the motherboard and hard drive OR the firmware
on the hard drive OR any hard drive software (Western Digital drivers for
large drives have been known to cause this problem and can easily be fixed
by just removing the WD software and let XP do the job on its own) OR a
problem with the BIOS settings.
If you understood none of the above...don't worry about it (not yet
anyway)
The solution varies from simply ensuring the cable between hard drive
and motherboard is properly pushed into place to a complete reformat of the
hard drive...or possibly replace the hard drive with a new one. I'm afraid
that you have no option but to turn the machine off as even the simplest
solution will require that you do this. Here are some instructions on what
to do...
1) Save your file again, but use a different file name...do that 2 or 3
times each with a distinct name resulting in several copies of the files on
your system...this will give you more chance of retrieving it later.
2) Right click on "My Computer" and select "Manage" then open up the item
"Storage" and click on "Disk Management". Now right click the Drive Letter
and select "Properties" and then "Tools" and finally "Error Checking" You
will get a question asking is it OK to do a disk check the next time you
turn the machine on...answer YES and then reboot your machine in the normal
manner.....the normal manner is to click on "Start" then select "Turn Off
Computer" and then clicking "Restart"....If you have EVER simply pulled the
plug, one of the possible outcomes is the one you describe....When the
computer powers up you will see some info on the state of the drive. A
possible report is that one or more clusters have been found to be faulty
and that they have been locked out, or, a file has failed CRC, or, lost file
fragments have been found and restored...(You often get that if you pull the
plug, or if the computer crashes) Its hard to tell you what to do if you get
the first couple of these faults....it more than likely means you are going
to loose something from the drive.....On the odd occasion I got these errors
I always did a reformat and restore a backup of the drive....thats easy when
you adhere to a proper regimen of hard drive protection.
3) If step 2 resulted in nothing of use then its time to check the cables.
Turn the machine off, remove the cover and gently press the connector into
position at both the drive and motherboard sockets. Power up the machine and
watch the screen carefully for ANY error message. If the power up procedure
falters through the very first display there is a good chance the drive is
defective in some way (This could still be a simple re-formatting job) If
you see no problem as it powers up run Movie Maker (or any other program
that creates files.....Notepad, Word Excell...it does not matter which) and
create something and save it to disk. If you get the same error report then
you have at least eliminated a badly fitted plug. If you still get problems
then....
4) If you have recently added the hard drive or if you have updated a driver
or done anything else that affects your drives you will have to consider
un-doing or re-doing that step in the hope that it at least stops this
problem re-occurring. This step will not restore previously damaged files.
5) If after all of the above you still have a hard drive problem, its time
to reformat!!!! Do NOT do this until you have asked a friend with more
knowledge than yourself what you should do. At this point ANYTHING is worth
trying rather than doing a full install. If there is no one available, post
another message to this thread outlining what you did and ALL error messages
you saw/encountered
The steps you should follow for an install are....
a) Backup as much or all of your hard drive to either CD or a new
sub-directory on another hard drive. Use a proper backup utility...the XP
one in System Tools will do a good job of this
b) Create a bootable floppy disk and ensure that the Format.exe or com (not
sure which it is at the moment) is stored on that disk. In case you are
wondering, "IF" you have a format problem...bad sector/cluster the only real
way of dealing with it (other than throwing the drive away) is to perform
the format function....it will lock out BAD sectors and create a properly
formatted environment (sorry about the Pun) for XP to install to later on.
Doing it this way you also get to see any errors on the screen rather than
in a summary afterwards and as a result you get a better feel for what is
going on.
c) leaving the bootable floppy disk in the drive reboot the machine...if all
goes well your system will boot to an environment which will be a black
screen and a flashing cursor. Type the following Format C: /FS:NTFS The
letter C is the drive letter, I have assumed its your drive C in the
example. While the format is taking place go have a cup of Tea. The format
option will try to format bad sectors, but if after checking them the
program finds they are not safe to use, it will lock them out so that they
will not again be available and thereby removing future problems...the
following is hard to define well, if you find that a large number of sectors
are locked out, it may be time to replace the drive. A VERY large number in
my book would be one percent of the drive and large maybe half that.
d) Open your CD Drive and put in the first of your system recovery disks or
the original XP disk and re-boot the machine (Ctrl-Alt-Del) and follow the
prompts...at the end of that you have to start putting back all of the
updates and service pack 2 etc...it IS a very tedious job
Solving hard drive and CRC errors can be time consuming...do not skip a step
you may miss something that offers a much shorter (in time) solution. In
addition, If you find that you have a lot of locked out clusters as a result
of step 2 above, it may indicate that the hard drive is on its to a complete
failure.....in this case you should make sure that you always have a copy of
important files stored somewhere other than that drive. If Step 2 fixes your
problem and then the problem re-appears save yourself the grief of loosing
all your work by buying a replacement drive ASAP. Doing a full backup of the
old drive and restoring that to the new drive will save potential hours of
work
I hope this helps a little
--
Best Wishes.....John Kelly
www.the-kellys.org
www.the-kellys.co.uk
Check out free video hosting at
www.the-kellys.org
----
\|||/
(oo)
----------ooO-(_)-Ooo-------------
All material gained from other sources is duly acknowledged. No Value is
obtained by publishing in any format other peoples work
