What the F**k happened?

  • Thread starter Thread starter georget
  • Start date Start date
To give a little background, I am running Win98se. The computer is a
1GH PIII Ibm computer which I have modified somewhat, and have 384
megs ram. I have two harddrives, partitioned as follows, C D on
drive 1, and E F G H on drive 2. Drive C is my OS and programs. D:
is where I keep the Windows98 CABS (entire CD) and where I store my
video files. E: is storage for my dig camera photos, and F: is a
small partition of only 2 gigs. That's where I have this newsreader
program, Agent 2, installed, as well as Firefox. The only other thing
on that partition are some dos programs and utilities. I keep Agent
in this small partition because Agent tends to cause lots of
fragmentation as I read, delete, and save usenet messages. Thus, it's
easy to defrag a small partition.

Now for the PROBLEM....
Last night I was reading some newsgroups. Then I installed an upgrade
for Firefox, from 2.0.0.3 to the latest version, which I think is
2.0.0.11. Both of these things were on drive F:. The Firefox upgrade
worked fine, and I loaded a few webpages with it. The last thing I
did was to retrieve the messages from a few newsgroups, before
shutting the computer off and going to bed.

This morning I turned on the computer and it booted to the Dos prompt.
(I always boot to dos and type "win" when I want windows). I typed
"WIN" and the computer froze up. I was making breakfast so it sat
that way for a half hour or more. I shut it off and restarted. It
told me there was no operating system to boot from, and I heard the
hard drives power down, but the computer fans still ran. (I DO NOT
use any power management at all). I shut off and on the computer
several times and had the same problem. I finally went to the BIOS
and reset it to DEFAULT, except shutting off the power management
again. While in the bios, it showed NO hard drives existed.
I rebooted and went to the dos prompt. I started windows and that
worked fine. I went online and opened Agent. I was reading the
messages (on this newsgroup), when I typed a reply to something. When
I clicked SEND, I got a blue screen and it said "Cannot write to drive
F:". Then everything froze up. I shut off the computer and once
again I could not boot and got the error "NO bootable drive"
(something like that). Once again I reset the bios and everything was
fine. I booted to dos and ran scandisk. all partitions were fine,
except F:. It said I could not read F:. Then said the fat table for
F: was corrupt, and I let scandisk do the fix for it. However, in the
end, everything on the whole partition was corrupt. I ended up with
over 100 .CHK files, and except for one directory, all the directory
names were changed to numbers. In other words, everything on that
partition was useless garbage. Scandisk kept re-running and finding
more and more errors. I finally just stopped it, and formatted the
partition. Nothing was really lost except the upgrade to Firefox, a
few bookmarks since my last backup, and all the newsgroup messages I
had saved in the past week (which are easy to replace).

After the format, I ran scandisk 3 times, the FULL scan. No drive
errors at all. Then I restored my backup for that partition, and
everything was fine until I opened Agent. Agent opened fine, but as
soon as I went online and started to retrieve messages, the computer
froze up again. This time when I rebooted, it could not find the
"boot drive" again, and once again I reset the bios to default.

Once booted, I reinstalled Agent on another partition (after doing a
complete backup). Then I did a FILE COMPARE, using the old Dos COMP
command, and found that the new Agent.exe was different than the one
from my backup. I zipped the old version and stashed it on a flash
drive. Then I reinstalled Agent from scratch on my F: partition.

Ever since I did that, I have had no further problems. I have
rebooted numerous times, gone on the newsgroups, ran Firefox (which is
back to the older version), and no further problems at all. I checked
all cables to insure they are tight as well as pushing ram sticks in
to insure they are tight.

What the F**K happened?
I have worked with computers for years, built many of them, and this
is just too weird. Either Agent.exe was corrupt, (but why would it
cause loss of FAT?), or the upgrade to Firefox caused a problem (yet
Firefox ran fine).

I'm thinking the battery may be weak, thus the loss of informnation,
but cant get one till Monday. Yet, the computer booted fine since....

This is just too bizarre.....
Anyone have any suggestions?

NO, I do not have any viruses. I checked that too.

I should also mention that something similar to this happened about a
week ago. That time the whole Agent directory was corrupt, but not
the rest of that partition. I deleted the Agent dir and replaced it
from my backup (which would be that same backup that appears to be a
bad .EXE).

I sure could use some help understanding this....

This was crossposted to 3 related newsgroups.
microsoft.public.win98.gen_discussion
alt.comp.hardware.homebuilt
alt.comp.hardware

Thanks

George T
Click to expand...

S**t happened.
 
Fortunately, beyond drive space it should have much higher
read/write performance, and a few years of use ahead of it.
Click to expand...

If this has much higher read/write speed, then there is anothr
problem. Since I changed the drive this computer runs slower than
molases in January. Everything else is back to the way it was,
including putting back the origonal ram. I thought maybe copying
windows when I cloned the drive was at fault, so I booted to dos (pure
dos, not shelled from Win). When I type "md folder1", there is
literally a 5 second delay before the dir is created. Heck, my
original pentium 166mhz was faster than this. I'm about ready to go
back to my 300mhz computer.

What could cause this? I have the drive jumper on CS. My bios is set
to default except for disabling all power management.

Even as I type this message, I am out typing what it shows on the
screen at times and I am no speed typer.

This is rediculous, come to think of it, my old 386 was faster in
dos........

George
 
You're underestimating yourself.

There's bound to be a lot of things you know that I don't.
Just spread info, that's what separates us from apes.
Click to expand...

:-) Thanks. But I doubt I know anything you don't. The rule of
thumb in this group is "don't do anything thanatoid suggests".
Of course, that is just a stupid generalization, and nobody
knows EVERYTHING, except many people think they do and I am VERY
willing to admit I don't.

Regards - and please visit more often!
 
If this has much higher read/write speed, then there is anothr
problem. Since I changed the drive this computer runs slower than
molases in January. Everything else is back to the way it was,
including putting back the origonal ram. I thought maybe copying
windows when I cloned the drive was at fault, so I booted to dos (pure
dos, not shelled from Win). When I type "md folder1", there is
literally a 5 second delay before the dir is created. Heck, my
original pentium 166mhz was faster than this. I'm about ready to go
back to my 300mhz computer.

What could cause this? I have the drive jumper on CS. My bios is set
to default except for disabling all power management.

Even as I type this message, I am out typing what it shows on the
screen at times and I am no speed typer.

This is rediculous, come to think of it, my old 386 was faster in
dos........

George
Click to expand...

I am going to reply to my onw message. I got the Western Digital disk
testing software and it kept stopping. It finally gave me an error
code which said to replace the drive. I returned this 80 gig drive to
the used computer store and came home with a used 40gig. With this
40, the computer is working fine again. When I showed the store guy
my printout from the Western Dig tests, he said to toss the drive in
the trash, or take it with me, and he gave me this 40 gig plus some
cash back. Since I still got the 80 gig, I am still wondering if it
can be repaired with a low level format. I did that once on a very
old 20 meg drive (yes, MEG, not gig). Back when I had an 8088 system.
I'm going to give it a try, even though I wont use the drive since it
cant be trusted. I am still wondering why Partition Magic and
Scandisk both showed the drive as a being GOOD, while the W.D.
disgnostics could not even finish the test.
Either way, that drive made the computer so slow it could not be used
for much of anything. Wiht this 40gig, and my 20gig slave drive, it
runs at normal speed again.

I still wonder if somehow my bios cant handle the 80 and that caused
the errors, but I think the W.D. Error Code 210 would have tole me.
 
(e-mail address removed) wrote in
I am going to reply to my onw message. I got the Western
Digital disk testing software and it kept stopping. It
finally gave me an error code which said to replace the
drive. I returned this 80 gig drive to the used computer
store and came home with a used 40gig. With this 40, the
computer is working fine again. When I showed the store
guy my printout from the Western Dig tests, he said to toss
the drive in the trash, or take it with me, and he gave me
this 40 gig plus some cash back. Since I still got the 80
gig, I am still wondering if it can be repaired with a low
level format. I did that once on a very old 20 meg drive
(yes, MEG, not gig). Back when I had an 8088 system. I'm
going to give it a try, even though I wont use the drive
since it cant be trusted. I am still wondering why
Partition Magic and Scandisk both showed the drive as a
being GOOD, while the W.D. disgnostics could not even
finish the test. Either way, that drive made the computer
so slow it could not be used for much of anything. Wiht
this 40gig, and my 20gig slave drive, it runs at normal
speed again.

I still wonder if somehow my bios cant handle the 80 and
that caused the errors, but I think the W.D. Error Code 210
would have tole me.
Click to expand...

Good to see you have the problem solved.

I wouldn't recommend doing much with the half-dead drive except
just play around and experiment until it is 100% dead. Open it
then (you may need to go to a computer store since some fancy
tiny hex wrenches will be needed) and you will find some REALLY
COOL unbelievably strong yet extremely short-distance magnets.
The platters (after a little drilling and attaching some
tasteful strings) also make a great avant-garde bikini top
(hmmm... why not bottom as well, come to think of it?) for your
girlfriend.
 
.... snip ...

I am going to reply to my onw message. I got the Western Digital
disk testing software and it kept stopping. It finally gave me
an error code which said to replace the drive. I returned this
80 gig drive to the used computer store and came home with a used
40gig. With this 40, the computer is working fine again. When I
showed the store guy my printout from the Western Dig tests, he
said to toss the drive in the trash, or take it with me, and he
Click to expand...

Contact WD directly. They have an 800 phone number, if you are in
the US or Canada. They may well replace it entirely. Your agent
should have done this.
 
If this has much higher read/write speed, then there is anothr
problem. Since I changed the drive this computer runs slower than
molases in January. Everything else is back to the way it was,
including putting back the origonal ram. I thought maybe copying
windows when I cloned the drive was at fault, so I booted to dos (pure
dos, not shelled from Win). When I type "md folder1", there is
literally a 5 second delay before the dir is created. Heck, my
original pentium 166mhz was faster than this. I'm about ready to go
back to my 300mhz computer.

What could cause this? I have the drive jumper on CS. My bios is set
to default except for disabling all power management.

Even as I type this message, I am out typing what it shows on the
screen at times and I am no speed typer.

This is rediculous, come to think of it, my old 386 was faster in
dos........

George
Click to expand...

I would wonder if the drive cable is bad, to check Device
Manager to confirm it is running in DMA mode, run HDTach to
benchmark the drive (google searching will find HDTach) and
if all else fails, run the HDD manufacturer's diagnostics to
check the drive fitness).

You might also post back what speeds HDTach reports,
including the peak and burst speeds. If your system has an
old HDD controller only capable of ATA33, that will
bottleneck a new drive a fair amount but it will still be
signficantly faster than an average old 20GB drive on the
same controller.
 
I am going to reply to my onw message. I got the Western Digital disk
testing software and it kept stopping. It finally gave me an error
code which said to replace the drive. I returned this 80 gig drive to
the used computer store and came home with a used 40gig. With this
40, the computer is working fine again. When I showed the store guy
my printout from the Western Dig tests, he said to toss the drive in
the trash, or take it with me, and he gave me this 40 gig plus some
cash back.
Click to expand...

I don't understand why you're buying these old hard drives
and taking a risk... when a new $120 GB HDD was available
for $50 a couple years ago, probably even less today, with a
full 3 or 5 year manufacturer's warranty and higher
performance as a modern generation part than an older drive
would have.

It is quite possible your "new" 40GB HDD is already so old
that it could die of old age/wear any day. Granted it is an
old system, but an investment in a newer drive is a
safeguard to data and the drive can always be pulled out and
put in another replacement system or external enclosure
later if the need arises.


Since I still got the 80 gig, I am still wondering if it
can be repaired with a low level format. I did that once on a very
old 20 meg drive (yes, MEG, not gig). Back when I had an 8088 system.
I'm going to give it a try, even though I wont use the drive since it
cant be trusted. I am still wondering why Partition Magic and
Scandisk both showed the drive as a being GOOD, while the W.D.
disgnostics could not even finish the test.
Click to expand...

Different tests, WD knows more about the proprietary nature
of their hardware and does more than just check filesystem
and partition integrity. Today's typical low level format
utilities just write zeros to the drive, which is useful for
lazy way to erase data enough that a (merely casual) hacker
would not be able to retrieve it, or to wipe out a logical
partition that DOS/FDISK can't get rid of (made by another
OS or crash during partitioning) or remove a virus, BUT to
repair a drive that is malfuncitonal it is not going to help
to zero-fill it.

Suppose you did get it working, could you then trust it to
store data? It must have been working at some point in the
past and then this happened... I wonder why the computer
shop had a spare 80GB drive and if they knew it had a
problem already before purchased, or was it new? It is
possible some 80GB drives are still new, but certainly 40GB
is quite old stock and probably not new.

Either way, that drive made the computer so slow it could not be used
for much of anything. Wiht this 40gig, and my 20gig slave drive, it
runs at normal speed again.

I still wonder if somehow my bios cant handle the 80 and that caused
the errors, but I think the W.D. Error Code 210 would have tole me.
Click to expand...

If it could not handle the capacity, you should not have
seen full capacity in the bios or windows. Some old systems
can't see 80GB drives, but they would not see 40GB then
either. Since it seems your system could/can see 40GB and
80GB, most likely it at least supports up to 128GB which was
why I previously suggested a 120GB sized drive, making it
potentially the best GB/%, largest capacity and performance
from a current model that the system could possibly support
well running win98.
 
I don't understand why you're buying these old hard drives
and taking a risk... when a new $120 GB HDD was available
for $50 a couple years ago, probably even less today, with a
full 3 or 5 year manufacturer's warranty and higher
performance as a modern generation part than an older drive
would have.
Click to expand...

Where did you see a 120 gig for $50?
I'm in a rural area. The only place to buy computer stuff is walmart,
unless I want to drive 60 miles and then there is best buy, and that
place is expensive if you ask me. This local second hand computer
shop is where I buy most everything for the computer. The guy is
fair, and helpful. That 80 gig was new and in that package. He said
it may have been dropped, which I know will screw up any HD. I paid
$35 for it, which I thought was fair, since walmart has a 120gig for
$80 and that was the cheapest I saw for a new one. I took the used
40gig and got $20 back. Besides, I did not think this computer could
handle a 120gigs, and then there is the fact that I am on a fixed
income. One other thing. having those huge drives would seem to me
that it would take longer to access the data since the drive has so
much more space to look at. Maybe I am wrong on that. I surely dont
need no 120 gigs. Even 80 seemed excessive, which is actually 100
since I always got my second drive which is 20gigs.

Now I am wondering if WD would do anything about this drive. I
suppose it dont hurt to ask.

Thanks

George T.
 
Somewhere on teh intarweb "(e-mail address removed)" typed:
Where did you see a 120 gig for $50?
Click to expand...

Two words for you to Google: Tigerdirect and Newegg.
--
TTFN,

Shaun.

"another academic failure.... trying to prove that your smart"
'blanking', nz.comp, 20 Dec 2007.

"your so predictable misfit"
'blanking', nz.comp, 21 Dec 2007.
 
Where did you see a 120 gig for $50?
Click to expand...

I bought them about 3 years ago at that price, but today it
seems there are less discounts (due to fewer rebates) on the
lower capacity drives than I'd thought, plus I noted an odd
trend that the place I was assuming would have one
(Newegg.com), seems to have mysteriously dropped all 120GB
models. They do still have 80GB for a little under $45
which is still a good idea, IMO, but I had assumed you got a
used drive instead... and still don't know about your 40GB
as it was a long time ago 40GB drives were newly
manufactured... not really all THAT long ago but the length
of a hard drive's expected lifespan, ago.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822144122

I'm in a rural area. The only place to buy computer stuff is walmart,
unless I want to drive 60 miles and then there is best buy, and that
place is expensive if you ask me. This local second hand computer
shop is where I buy most everything for the computer. The guy is
fair, and helpful. That 80 gig was new and in that package. He said
it may have been dropped, which I know will screw up any HD. I paid
$35 for it, which I thought was fair, since walmart has a 120gig for
$80 and that was the cheapest I saw for a new one.
Click to expand...

The internet is almost always the best place to shop for new
computer hardware. Granted there's a shipping fee but
unless an item is very large, that fee is often little to
nothing more than the local sales tax at a brick-n-mortar
store.

It is suprising you got a new drive for $35, that was an
unusually good deal except for the bad luck that it was
faulty... or that dropping it damaged it, but it is odd he
mentioned that, as if trying to discourage the purchase
instead of just offering a standard customer warranty then
leaving the remaining warranty to the HDD manufacturer
(since it should still be valid for a new product bought at
retail from a computer shop).


I took the used
40gig and got $20 back. Besides, I did not think this computer could
handle a 120gigs, and then there is the fact that I am on a fixed
income. One other thing. having those huge drives would seem to me
that it would take longer to access the data since the drive has so
much more space to look at. Maybe I am wrong on that. I surely dont
need no 120 gigs. Even 80 seemed excessive, which is actually 100
since I always got my second drive which is 20gigs.
Click to expand...

A newer generation, and/or larger drive, is faster. There
is no penalty in access time due to it being larger
capacity. A current generation 120GB drive is probably over
twice as fast as the average 40GB, but since the system is a
bit aged at this point too, it is less of a bottleneck that
it might've been on a new system.


Now I am wondering if WD would do anything about this drive. I
suppose it dont hurt to ask.
Click to expand...

The new 80GB? If you have a receipt and it's a retail, not
OEM drive, AND it wasn't manufactured over 3 years ago, yes
they should replace it. Well on second thought there were
some other OEM drives with 3 year warranty and some retail
with only one year... but it doesn't hurt to ask. I would
suspect there is no warranty valid though, because if there
were it would make sense for the computer shop to take it
back so they didn't suffer the loss on it.
 
Somewhere on teh intarweb "kony" typed:
I bought them about 3 years ago at that price, but today it
seems there are less discounts (due to fewer rebates) on the
lower capacity drives than I'd thought, plus I noted an odd
trend that the place I was assuming would have one
(Newegg.com), seems to have mysteriously dropped all 120GB
models.
Click to expand...

I think this might be because most HDD manufacturers seem to be using
80/160GB platters in their smaller drives.
--
TTFN,

Shaun.

"another academic failure.... trying to prove that your smart"
'blanking', nz.comp, 20 Dec 2007.

"your so predictable misfit"
'blanking', nz.comp, 21 Dec 2007.
 
Somewhere on teh intarweb "kony" typed:

I think this might be because most HDD manufacturers seem to be using
80/160GB platters in their smaller drives.
Click to expand...

You're probably right, but now I am wishing drives near this
128GB, 48LBA boundary, had a capacity limit jumper like many
do for 32GB.

Not that it's a problem for me, I have a bunch of PCI ATA133
controller cards, but it is hit or miss if more than one
will work in any given legacy system and IMO, one of the
great things about a well designed legacy system (reliable,
I mean) is it's suitability to be a fileserver or NAS.

I still have an old Celeron 500, i810 fileserver with 8
drives in it. Using today's NAS pricing, that would cost a
minimum of $200 to replace, even more if I wanted a
significant performance increase while the parts to build it
were essentially *free*, as the only thing I had to really
scrutinize was selection of a good quality PSU with ample
12V current capability (at the time, which was back when
systems still used mostly 5V current so 12V biased PSU were
less common).

Ultimately, I selected a 240W Delta PSU, and it has
performed well without skipping a beat. I wonder what
modern, supposedly in-touch gurus would suggest today for
such a config... probably a 500-750W PSU, which would cost
about 5X as much as I paid.

Someday that Celeron 500 based fileserver will die and I
will be sad about it, because it is one example of hardware
that I really got some mileage out of, for almost no cost.
Other examples are a Celeron 600 that overclocked to a
little past 1.2GHz, and some ancient Enlight cases that were
built like tanks.

<sigh>, today things are different, everyone thinks you need
to put a few hundred dollars into doing anything, but mostly
talks about doing it instead of seeing that others already
do it acceptibly at a fraction of the cost.

Old hardware is a goldmine, so long as you're not stuck
using it for your most used system and have demanding needs.
 
<<snip>>

For what it's worth, you can still buy new 160MB IDE drives for 49.99 plus
shipping at this link, at least as of a few minutes ago.

http://www.chiefvalue.com/product-_-productlist.cv_-_linkid--16002&catalog--14
Click to expand...

Thank you for the link, but my intention was a low cost
drive of no more than 120GB capacity since the bios may not
be able to handle more than that. With Windows (98) it
could just use a 120GB partition on a larger capacity drive
so the disk tools still work.
 
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