[LindaP]

I have been having a problem on my Dell Inspiron 1100 since day before yesterday (currently on a different computer). When I try to boot, I get the "blue screen of death". I contacted Dell support who had me run some diagnostics and determined that there was a bad block on the hard drive. They are sending me a new drive and said there was no way to block out the bad block. I just tried to boot again and the system booted and ran normally for a short time! I was attempting to back up a couple of files and the blue screen came back. I am unable to get into safe mode most of the time, but at one point I got in and tried to run CHKDSK. It gave me a message that it couldn't run then, but would run on the next startup. This came up and ran when the system booted.

The messages that come up on the blue screen vary almost everytime I try to boot. Some of the messages I have gotten:
DRIVER_IRQL_NOT-LESS_OR_EQUAL
PAGE_FAULT_IN_NONPAGED_AREA
BAD_POOL_HEADER

I'm not sure at this point whether it is a hardware problem or not. Would anyone have any suggestions? Also, any information about slaving the old drive to the new drive if that is possible. Any help is appreciated.

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NEVER try to get stuff off a BB-disk Your current operating system, might try to run that disk and when the rotor hits that bad block, its a fantastic fire spectacle. You were lucky you didn;t blew up your pc, like we had in school when trying to stubbornly fix a bb-disk.

[gerryf]

yezpahr,

Please, stop with the nonsense.

Linda,

It is still likely the drive..parts of your drive are now unreadable and windows will function at times because some of the OS is still functional. During load, windows cannot load everything due to the corrupted files within the bad block--so, as long as windows is not accessing a particular function, it will run, but as it needs that part, you will get the problem you describe.

Now, to get the data off that old drive...this is a laptop, correct. You will not be able to slave the old drive to the new drive in a conventional sense since your old drive is an internal drive with a 2.5 ide adapter.

To achieve this, you need to buy another part....

One way is to buy a 2.5 to 3.5 ide adapter, and get the data by hooking it to a desktop machine....do you have that?

The other way is to buy a 2.5 external harddisk enclosure--you will be able to inser the old drive into this, then hook that up to a USB port.

These can be had for as little as $15 us

http://www.newegg.co...Submit=Property

[gerryf]

NEVER try to get stuff off a BB-disk          Your current operating system, might try to run that disk...

Your post implies this is a dangerous procedure based on one bad experience...I have recovered data from 100s of drives and this has never occured. I will assume you are telling the truth and this has occured, but it is such an isolated instant as to be negligable.

NEVER is NONSENSE

[mohsin]

what is BB disk by the way .. i m not geting it all

[Murray S.]

Come on yezpahr get serious.. A bad block is simply an area of the hdd that is unreadable..

Willing to bet there was something else wrong with the system to cause what you described!!

Murray

[LindaP]

Thank you for your help gerryf.

The new drive came in today, but we haven't heard back yet from tech support to install it. I was able to get the system up in safe mode with networking and was able to attach the file to an email and send it to myself. Unfortunately it is a .qpw file and I am using Windows 98 on the old computer. But I'll just email it back when I get the hard drive up in the other computer.

If my hubby needs anything else off the machine, I'll take your advice on trying the external hard disk. He'll want outlook settings and address books for sure!

Thanks again.

[gerryf]

your welcome...

[LindaP]

Is there any possibility that a fan not running could cause the problem? Also, my husband said that the bad block was at 42,000,000+ out of 58,000,000 blocks. Would the OS be loaded this high on the drive? Is there any way to mark it as bad if I can get back into safe mode?

[gerryf]

if you can load into windows safe mode or command prompt, try

chkdsk /r

it will try to move the data and mark the section of the drive as bad so windows will not use it again.

Windows can load from that high since it drops files all over the disk.

A bad fan or too much heat can cause a drive to malfunction, yes

[LindaP]

Thanks again. I will try this if I can get to safe mode again. I'm not hearing the fan run when in safe mode or as soon as the blue screen comes up. If heat is part of the problem, I'm guessing a new drive is not going to solve this problem.

[gerryf]

It would have to be pretty hot, and the problem would not be instantaneous with a new drive.

Generally, though, the heat causes the drive to seize.

[LindaP]

Update to my problem. The new hard drive didn't work and we were fortunate to have purchased an extended warranty that provided in-home service. It took awhile, but the tech came today and installed a new mother board. Looks like it's going to work just fine. Still don't have everything loaded, but getting closer.

Thanks again for the help.