[michaelg9]

This guide will give you the information you want

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Hello,
Hitachi doesn't have hard drive testing utilities for Mac.
Do this:

Go to Applications > Utilities > Disk Utility.
Click on the "First Aid" button.

Mac OS 9.x and Earlier

The Drive Setup utility has a test function built in which is able to perform read tests on the drive. This can be accessed by starting the Drive Setup utility and following these steps:

In the "List of Drives"' section of the Drive Setup window, select the drive you wish to test.
Go to the Functions menu and choose "Test".
Press Start to begin the test.

[michaelg9]

Hello,
Hitachi doesn't have hard drive testing utilities for Mac.
Do this:

Go to Applications > Utilities > Disk Utility.
Click on the "First Aid" button.

Mac OS 9.x and Earlier

The Drive Setup utility has a test function built in which is able to perform read tests on the drive. This can be accessed by starting the Drive Setup utility and following these steps:

In the "List of Drives"' section of the Drive Setup window, select the drive you wish to test.
Go to the Functions menu and choose "Test".
Press Start to begin the test.

[johnkirin]

Thanks. I eventually figured that out; the details are posted in the previous post above.

I tries the last known good configuration. Nothing changed. Still get the BSOD.

[michaelg9]

Hello,
Your case seem to be strange, all look OK but we can't access windows, so I want to confirm that your Hard Drive is OK.
Did you run the check I posted above?
Thank you

[johnkirin]

The instructions seem to be for OS 9 and earlier. I have OS x. In disk utility, I can choose the Hitachi drive, the Mac partition and the Bootcamp partition (the XP partition). Disk Utility for OS X does not have a Functions menu or a Test option. When you choose one of the drives, there are four buttons that seem applicable: Very Disk Permissions, Repair Disk Permissions, Verify Disk and Repair Disk. For the XP partition, the only one that is not greyed out is "Verify Disk" which quickly reports that no NTFS checks have been implemented and states that it is reporting back that the disk is fine without checking. From what I understand, the Macbook is normally read-only for NTFS. I do have a program that lets me write to it. It is called NTFS-3g, and it runs under MacFuse, which is a Google-sponsored toolkit. But I believe it is a workaround, though a very common one, that is not directly supported by OS X (hence the lack of a read-write check for the NTFS partition).

On the Mac partition, I have run all four tests. It is making some repairs to the permissions of the Mac partition.I have run the two disk tests on the drive as a whole, but I believe all that does is run the tests on each partition that are applicable to it. In other words, I don't think it's any different than running the tests on the Mac partition and the one, non-functional test on the XP partition.

I will restart as soon as the Mac partition is done being repaired.

(By the way, there is also a small partition -- I think it's 200M -- which seems to serve as some function in the Bootcamp partitioning scheme.It does not show up as a separate disk in disk utility, but it does show up to DOS/XP. It has always been there; it's not something that was created with this problem.

[johnkirin]

Let me amend what I said in the last post.

First, disk utility now gives me the option to verify or repair the Bootcamp (XP) partition. The repair button used to be greyed out. I guess because i have the NTFS-3g program installed, and can now write to an NTFS disk, the button is now active. But when I run repair, the message quickly comes back that some file (I think the one used to run the repair) has been disabled because the disk is corrupted. But remember that OS X itself does not have any provision for writing to NTFS. I'm guessing that this is not an actual problem, but you tell me. The verify and repair permissions buttons are still greyed out.

Second, the overall drive selection only allows me to choose verify (disk, not permissions). It then seems to run verify on the Mac partition (showing no problems) and then on the Bootcamp drive (giving the message that no verification has been implemented for NTSF). I'm pretty sure that this is just the equivalent of choosing to very the Mac and bootcamp partitions separately.

Third, for the Mac partition, I have run the verify and repair permissions processes five or six times in a row, and there's something to repair every time. It may be the same files over and over, because they alwas have to do with the Front Row and iPhoto applications -- which I do not believe I have ever even opened.

Regardless, there is no change. Still get the BSOD.

I did FIXMBR again, because we were doing well the last time we did that. No change. I ran another XP repair install from the DVD, and no change, still BSOD. (I keep wondering what happened during the last repair install to set us back, since between when we did FIXMBR the first time and when we did the repair install, we were at least able to get to the login screen.)

Edited by johnkirin, 20 April 2011 - 06:35 PM.

[michaelg9]

Hello,

• Start from your Mac OS X Install disc: Insert the installation disc, then restart the computer while holding the C key.
• When your computer finishes starting up from the disc, choose Disk Utility from the Installer menu. (In Mac OS X 10.4 or later, you must select your language first.)
• Important: Do not click Continue in the first screen of the Installer. If you do, you must restart from the disc again to access Disk Utility.
• Click the First Aid tab.
• Click the disclosure triangle to the left of the hard drive icon to display the names of your hard disk volumes and partitions.
• Select your Mac OS X volume.
• Click Repair. Disk Utility checks and repairs the disk.

Next:
Check the SMART statues of your Hard Drive. Please tell me what its value is.


Next:

• Please boot into Recovery Console from Windows XP CD.
• Please make sure you follow the instructions of this guide exactly as given or you might risk more problems.
  NOTE; Make sure you press Enter after each command.
  Make sure all commands are exactly as shown in this guide, including "spaces".
  
  First, we will start off with these 6 commands.
  

  CD..
  ATTRIB -H C:\boot.ini
  ATTRIB -S C:\boot.ini
  ATRIB -R C:\boot.ini
  del boot.ini
  BOOTCFG /Rebuild

  
  Note about the above command.
  BOOTCFG /REBUILD will search for pre-existing installations of Windows XP and rebuilds sundry essential components of the Windows operating system, recompiles the BOOT.INI file and corrects a litany of common Windows errors.
  
  For the Enter Load Identifier portion of this command, you should enter the name of the operating system you have installed.
  If, for example, you are using Windows XP Home, you could type Microsoft Windows XP Home Edition for the identifier (it's not crucial, however what the name is, as long, as it's meaningful).
  For the OS Load Option portion of this command, you should enter the following: /FASTDETECT /NOEXECUTE=OPTIN
  It is very important that you do one or both of the following two things:
  
  Here is what you should see:
  
• Exit Recovery Console.

After this, check if anything changed and tell me.

Note:
Normally, after all these fixes, the specific BSOD should go but if that's not the case, then it seems that something strange is causing the BSOD (I'm starting to believe that are compatibility issues with OSX and Windows.)
The easiest fix from now on would be to get any backup of the data you want from the Windows partition using the OSX partition, and then format and re-install Windows.
However, if you don't want the easiest fix and you want to try up all chances first, I'm willing to help you. The choice is up to you, I just wanted to inform you
So please tell me if we're going to proceed with other fixes that may solve this, or if you decided to reformat.

[johnkirin]

My OS X install disk is 10.5.4 because that is what was originally installed. The software update system has since upgraded to 10.5.8. Will the 10.5.4 disk work for this?

[michaelg9]

Normally, there shouldn't be a big change so try it

[johnkirin]

I did the Mac bit ... disk checked out OK, so I don;t think Repair actually did anything. I'm running Permission Repair as well for good measure. Where do I find the SMART status? (I have run Onyx from within the HD's OS X system, and it checks the SMART status for itself and has not reported any problems, but I do not know where to check for it manually.)

Ah, OK, the SMART status applies to the overall drive, not the partitions. For the Hitachi (the physical drive) it says "verified". I'll go run the XP procedure now.

Edited by johnkirin, 21 April 2011 - 11:14 AM.

[johnkirin]

I did the Windows bit. I still get a BSOD. (I don't know if it's the same specific BSOD or not.) Before the Windows logo with the scrolling blue blocks come on, a black screen with a few lines of text now flashes. It says, "Please choose the operating system to start up," and the choices are "Windows XP Professional" (the name I just put in when we did bootcnfg /rebuild) and "Microsoft WIndows XP Professional". Previously, I only got a black screen with perhaps a cursor at that stage. I have tried both, and the result is a BSOD and reboot wither way.

I'd like to try whatever you can think of. I already backed up the data, but there are a number of rare programs I have installed which I have no practical way to reinstall for months if we can't recover the Windows partition. (The disks are buried away in a storage locker hundreds of miles away.)

Edited by johnkirin, 21 April 2011 - 11:52 AM.

[michaelg9]

Hello,
To prevent automatic restarting when a BSOD occurs, please press the F5 button and there should be an entry named "Disable automatic restart on system failure."
Now, when you get the BSOD, you will normally see some details including:

Bug Check string: KERNEL_MODE_EXCEPTION_NOT_HANDLED
Bug check code: 0x1000008e
Caused by driver: ntoskrnl.exe

If that's not the case please tell me


Next:

Please restart the computer and keep pressing F5 to get to the boot menu. Select "Safe mode with Command Prompt". Tell me if you are able to boot from there

[johnkirin]

Whether I choose "Wndows XP Professional" or "Microsoft Windows XP Professional", I get a BSOD if I try a normal startup and get a warning box (requiring restart) if I try a Safe Mode with Command Prompt startup.

The BSOD consistently says this (leaving out the boilerplate parts):

"The problem seems to be caused by the following file: nv4_mini.sys

DRIVER_UNLOADED_WITHOUT_CANCELLING_PENDING_OPERATIONS"

and, at the bottom:

"Technical information:

***STOP: 0x000000CE (0xB71B6410, 0x00000008, 0xB71B6410, 0x00000000)

nv4_mini.sys"

[johnkirin]

Very good news. The XP partition now starts. The nv4_mini.sys file is apparently an Nvidia display driver. I saw a suggestioon somewhere to rename that file nv4_mini.old. I figured that could not hurt, and I could always change it back, so I tried that. Then I booted XP and, after the Windows logo, the system continued the XP repair installation. (I never realized that it had not finished; I thought that the process in the repair console, which showed a progress bar, was the entire repair installation, but I guess it was only the first part.) So, for days, we have been in mid-installation and I didn;t know it. The repair installation finished; it hung up on the black screen with a windows logo at the end of the process, but when I turned the machine off and restarted the Windows partition, XP was back. It seems to be just fine. It does seem a little slow, but ridiculously so. So now I need some guidance:

-I shut down the XP partition in case the original infection still needs to be cleaned up. Please give me some guidance on that.

-I still get two choices about which Windows installation to start up (Windows XP Professional or Microsoft Windows XP Professional). I don;t think they're separate partitions. In fact, I can' see that there's any difference between them. So it seems pretty pointless to have the screen with both choices flash. Is there any easy way to eliminate it? Of course, it doesn't cause any significant delay, so if fixing this would entail any risk, we can just leave it alone.

-I guess I may have to reinstall the most recent Nvidia drivers (though maybe not). I have that package on my Windows drive, so that will not be a problem. but I'll hold off until we're sure everything is OK.

THANK YOU SO MUCH!

[michaelg9]

Hello,

Finally good news

Yes we can improve the performance of your computer a bit at the end.

Is there any easy way to eliminate it?

• Right click on My Computer and go to Advanced tab and under StartUp and Recovery section click Settings button
• Choose the default OS from the drop down list.
• From there you can choose either to reduce the time displaying the Operating Systems, or boot one automatically.
• To boot automatically to the default OS, uncheck the check box near:
  Time to display list of Operating Systems

Next:

Download OTL to your Desktop

• Double click on the icon to run it. Make sure all other windows are closed and to let it run uninterrupted.
• Click on Minimal Output at the top
• Download the following file scan.txt to your Desktop. Click here to download it. You may need to right click on it and select "Save"
• Double click inside the Custom Scan box at the bottom
• A window will appear saying "Click Ok to load a custom scan from a file or Cancel to cancel"
• Click the Ok button and navigate to the file scan.txt which we just saved to your desktop
• Select scan.txt and click Open. Writing will now appear under the Custom Scan box
• Click the Quick Scan button. Do not change any settings unless otherwise told to do so. The scan wont take long.
  
• When the scan completes, it will open two notepad windows. OTL.Txt and Extras.Txt. These are saved in the same location as OTL.
• Please copy (Edit->Select All, Edit->Copy) the contents of these files, one at a time and post them in your topic

Next:
Download the GMER Rootkit Scanner. Unzip it to your Desktop.

Before scanning, make sure all other running programs are closed and no other actions like a scheduled antivirus scan will occur while the scan is being performed. Do not use your computer for anything else during the scan.

Double-click gmer.exe. The program will begin to run.

**Caution**
These types of scans can produce false positives. Do NOT take any action on any "<--- ROOKIT" entries unless advised!

If possible rootkit activity is found, you will be asked if you would like to perform a full scan.

• Click NO
• In the right panel, you will see a bunch of boxes that have been checked ... leave everything checked and ensure the Show all box is un-checked.
• Now click the Scan button.
  Once the scan is complete, you may receive another notice about rootkit activity.
• Click OK.
• GMER will produce a log. Click on the [Save..] button, and in the File name area, type in "GMER.txt"
• Save it where you can easily find it, such as your desktop.

Post the contents of GMER.txt in your next reply.



Next:
Try to work your computer a little and then tell me what symptoms appear, if any