P
Princess Morgiah
Hi everyone,
(A bit of a long story, but I hope some kind soul will be patient enough to
read it and provide me with some help. Thanks in advance.)
I've encountered a rather serious problem with my computer that I cannot
seem to solve.
A week ago, one of two hard disks (both Maxtor 160GB) in my system crashed,
and after I ran several chkdsk sessions, the drive remained usable but with
bad sectors. I immediately updated my backup to include my most recent
files, and went out to get a new hard disk.
I added a 200GB Samsumg disk to replace the failing Maxtor. My ABIT
motherboard could only handle a maximum of two SATA disks, so I added a new
controller (Promise) as well.
Since the failing disk contained my Windows 2000 installation, I decided to
try and ghost the disk with Norton Ghost, and transfer the image to the new
disk.
As expected because of the errors, the transfer did not succeed, and I
started reinstalling the system.
Upon reinstalling the system and all of the software I had been using
before, everything seemed to be in working order again. But after a few
reboots, the machine started to complain about errors on the disk (the new
disk), and suggested I ran a chkdsk again.
I did, and it resulted in a LOT of errors on the new drive. A few reboots
later, I got a blue screen with the following error: The registry cannot
load the hive (file) \%SystemRoot%\System32\Config\Software or it's log or
alternate. It is corrupt, absent or not writable.
Via Google I was able to find a way to repair(!) this disk, by copying files
from %SystemRoot\repair to the damaged files. This brought back my system,
but not the installed software. Also, the explorer.exe process failed to
start, and I was not able to create a new one by using the task manager
(explorer.exe has generated errors etcetera). The process basically returns
my machine to the last installed state. Which is rather pointless, because
after reinstalling all software again, I'm back at the same point (the blue
screen) again.
Anyway, I have reinstalled the system several times already, each time
resulting in the same scenario: as soon as all the software is installed, I
begin copying my backup again to the disks. Upon one of the following
reboots, I get the warning that one of my drives (random, C to G) contains
errors and that it needs to be checked, after which the aforementioned error
appears again and a blue screen follows.
I have come to the following conclusions so far:
- it is not the fault of the new disk: the errors appear at random, on
random partitions, and on random disks
- it is not the fault of new drivers: I've reinstalled the system with
updated drivers, and with the original ones (as previously installed, the
system has worked for over a year with them)
- it is not the fault of the Promise controller, or the failing hard disk,
as both have been removed prior to my last install.
- after the first two installs, I created a new Ghost image on DVD, which I
have not done the last time. No difference. Not installing Norton Ghost
doesn't make a difference as well.
The only things I'm left with to check are:
- installing everything again with Service Pack 3 instead of 4 (the only
difference I've made since the previous install)
- installing without the latest AVG Antivirus (I had an earlier version on
the older install) - but I fail to see why it would mess with the machine...
- installing on the remaining (good) Maxtor instead of the Samsung
By then, I'm out of options. Does anybody have any ideas or suggestions as
to what can cause this? Or any ideas on how to further investigate this
situation?
Thanks very much in advance,
Princess Morgiah
PS: The reason why I want to keep the failing Maxtor inside the box is very
simple: I am a software developer and from time to time I write software
which generates a LOT of data (enormous amounts of little files). Keeping
them is pointless, so I decided to use the failing drive to write those
files to. If the drive fails, nothing important is lost, and at the moment,
only 270k of those 160GB are marked bad. In other words, I'd like to keep
the disk to 'save' the other disks...
(A bit of a long story, but I hope some kind soul will be patient enough to
read it and provide me with some help. Thanks in advance.)
I've encountered a rather serious problem with my computer that I cannot
seem to solve.
A week ago, one of two hard disks (both Maxtor 160GB) in my system crashed,
and after I ran several chkdsk sessions, the drive remained usable but with
bad sectors. I immediately updated my backup to include my most recent
files, and went out to get a new hard disk.
I added a 200GB Samsumg disk to replace the failing Maxtor. My ABIT
motherboard could only handle a maximum of two SATA disks, so I added a new
controller (Promise) as well.
Since the failing disk contained my Windows 2000 installation, I decided to
try and ghost the disk with Norton Ghost, and transfer the image to the new
disk.
As expected because of the errors, the transfer did not succeed, and I
started reinstalling the system.
Upon reinstalling the system and all of the software I had been using
before, everything seemed to be in working order again. But after a few
reboots, the machine started to complain about errors on the disk (the new
disk), and suggested I ran a chkdsk again.
I did, and it resulted in a LOT of errors on the new drive. A few reboots
later, I got a blue screen with the following error: The registry cannot
load the hive (file) \%SystemRoot%\System32\Config\Software or it's log or
alternate. It is corrupt, absent or not writable.
Via Google I was able to find a way to repair(!) this disk, by copying files
from %SystemRoot\repair to the damaged files. This brought back my system,
but not the installed software. Also, the explorer.exe process failed to
start, and I was not able to create a new one by using the task manager
(explorer.exe has generated errors etcetera). The process basically returns
my machine to the last installed state. Which is rather pointless, because
after reinstalling all software again, I'm back at the same point (the blue
screen) again.
Anyway, I have reinstalled the system several times already, each time
resulting in the same scenario: as soon as all the software is installed, I
begin copying my backup again to the disks. Upon one of the following
reboots, I get the warning that one of my drives (random, C to G) contains
errors and that it needs to be checked, after which the aforementioned error
appears again and a blue screen follows.
I have come to the following conclusions so far:
- it is not the fault of the new disk: the errors appear at random, on
random partitions, and on random disks
- it is not the fault of new drivers: I've reinstalled the system with
updated drivers, and with the original ones (as previously installed, the
system has worked for over a year with them)
- it is not the fault of the Promise controller, or the failing hard disk,
as both have been removed prior to my last install.
- after the first two installs, I created a new Ghost image on DVD, which I
have not done the last time. No difference. Not installing Norton Ghost
doesn't make a difference as well.
The only things I'm left with to check are:
- installing everything again with Service Pack 3 instead of 4 (the only
difference I've made since the previous install)
- installing without the latest AVG Antivirus (I had an earlier version on
the older install) - but I fail to see why it would mess with the machine...
- installing on the remaining (good) Maxtor instead of the Samsung
By then, I'm out of options. Does anybody have any ideas or suggestions as
to what can cause this? Or any ideas on how to further investigate this
situation?
Thanks very much in advance,
Princess Morgiah
PS: The reason why I want to keep the failing Maxtor inside the box is very
simple: I am a software developer and from time to time I write software
which generates a LOT of data (enormous amounts of little files). Keeping
them is pointless, so I decided to use the failing drive to write those
files to. If the drive fails, nothing important is lost, and at the moment,
only 270k of those 160GB are marked bad. In other words, I'd like to keep
the disk to 'save' the other disks...
