[myspoonistoobig]

I woke up yesterday morning and my computer was claiming that my e: drive (Western Digital 30GB, formatted FAT32, slave on IDE 0) was unformatted. I figured the drive had crashed and entered my usual post-crash depression, until I went to load a text file onto a floppy disk. XP claimed that not only was my trusty red disk unformatted, but when I went to format it, XP refused, claiming that the format could not be completed (but not giving a reason, naturally).

I have also noticed Explorer lagging severely, especially when trying to access "My Computer". Anything involving Explorer in any way is severely lagging, and my CPU seems to be lagging severely (despite Taskman showing no abnormally low idle rates).

This puzzles me, because neither AVG 7, AdAware SE, nor Ewido have picked up anything virus- or malware-related, and my HJT log looks clean as a whistle (I can procure this if necessary).

Coincidentally, also yesterday morning there was an interruption of my cable internet service which has since been resolved.

I think it very funny that Windows will read my C: and D: drives (both NTFS, partitions of a 120GB Seagate, 10GB and 110GB respectively, with my OS and essential programs on C: and all my nonessential programs, documents, videos, etc. on D: ), but refuses to read my E: drive (which contains all my music, including my band's CD audio which I have to start duplicating very soon) nor any sort of floppy drive (I have both an internal and external USB floppy drive).

Can anyone shed some light on this? I've scoured Google for the last 45 minutes to no avail.

Thanks,
Dave

"My spoon is too big!"
"I am a banana!"

Edited by myspoonistoobig, 07 July 2005 - 11:21 PM.

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[myspoonistoobig]

[makai]

Did you try reinstalling your Chipset/IDE control drivers?

What happens if you drop your WD 30gb onto IDE channel 2. Can you access it there?

Since you can't access your floppy, and even your USB floppy seems to be toast, it really sounds like you lost some motherboard drivers somewhere.


Oops... sorry, I was just answering some other post in the Win98*admin forum. I thought I was still there! Xp probably already has your drivers installed. But still, perhaps they got corrupted. You could try System restoring a few days back to see what happens. I would still swap the WD to IDE Ch2 just to see what happens first though.

makai

Edited by makai, 08 July 2005 - 07:27 AM.

[gerryf]

right click MY COMPUTER, choose MANAGE, choose DISK MANAGEMENT
What is the status of the drive e:

Choose Action, choose RESCAN DISKS...anthing change?

also
start > run, type
eventvwr.msc
<enter>

Look under systems for items with red Xs

[myspoonistoobig]

right click MY COMPUTER, choose MANAGE, choose DISK MANAGEMENT
What is the status of the drive e:

Choose Action, choose RESCAN DISKS...anthing change?

E: / Partition / Basic / no file system / Healthy / 27.95 GB / 27.95 GB free
C: / Partition / Basic / NTFS / Healthy (System) / 10.00 GB / 6.68 GB free
D: / Partition / Basic / NTFS / Healthy / 101.79 GB / 53.20 GB free

also
start > run, type
eventvwr.msc
<enter>

Look under systems for items with red Xs

It does seem to be directly correlated to my internet interruption.

At 7/6/05 12:19 PM, I got the following:

Event Type: Error
Event Source: N100
Event Category: None
Event ID: 27
Date:  7/6/2005
Time:  12:19:52 PM
User:  N/A
Computer: HEAD
Description:
Adapter Compaq NC3121 Fast Ethernet NIC: Adapter Link Down
Data:
0000: 00 00 04 00 02 00 56 00  ......V.
0008: 00 00 00 00 1b 00 04 c0  .......À
0010: 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00  ........
0018: 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00  ........
0020: 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00  ........
0028: 1b 00 04 c0              ...À   

and received several of these (along with DHCP errors and several "Information" type warnings) until 12:31 PM.

Then, on 7/6/05 12:30:49 PM, it starts giving me disk errors:

Event Type: Error
Event Source: Disk
Event Category: None
Event ID: 7
Date:  7/6/2005
Time:  12:30:49 PM
User:  N/A
Computer: HEAD
Description:
The device, \Device\Harddisk1\D, has a bad block.

For more information, see Help and Support Center at http://go.microsoft....link/events.asp.
Data:
0000: 00680003 00b60001 00000000 c0040007
0010: 00000100 c000009c 00000000 00000000
0020: 007ef000 00000000 00000475 00000000
0030: ffffffff 00000001 84000040 00010002
0040: 120a2000 40200340 00000000 0000000a
0050: 1ed1b000 81fd0a78 00000000 81fcfe70
0060: 00000002 00003f78 00000028 0000783f
0070: 00000008 00000000 000300f0 0b000000
0080: 00000000 00000000 00000000 00000000

The disk errors repeat every 45 seconds or so, my system clock claims to be unsynchronized once or twice, and the DHCP/N100 errors show up every hour or so until 7:30 PM which is when service got restored.

At 8:07 PM there is this error (a "warning" flagged with the yellow triangle):

Event Type: Warning
Event Source: Disk
Event Category: None
Event ID: 52
Date:  7/6/2005
Time:  8:07:16 PM
User:  N/A
Computer: HEAD
Description:
The driver has detected that device \Device\Harddisk1\DR1 has predicted that it will fail.  Immediately back up your data and replace your hard disk drive. A failure  may be imminent.

For more information, see Help and Support Center at http://go.microsoft....link/events.asp.
Data:
0000: 0003000e 005e0001 00000000 80040034
0010: 00000002 00000000 00000000 002d1100
0020: 00000000 00000000 000000

By this time I could not even access E: .

The errors stop at 8:48 AM yesterday morning.

[myspoonistoobig]

Did you try reinstalling your Chipset/IDE control drivers?

What happens if you drop your WD 30gb onto IDE channel 2.  Can you access it there?

Since you can't access your floppy, and even your USB floppy seems to be toast, it really sounds like you lost some motherboard drivers somewhere.
Oops... sorry, I was just answering some other post in the Win98*admin forum.  I thought I was still there!  Xp probably already has your drivers installed.  But still, perhaps they got corrupted.  You could try System restoring a few days back to see what happens.  I would still swap the WD to IDE Ch2 just to see what happens first though.

makai

It will only allow me to System Restore drives C: and D:, and I have it shut off anyway to conserve space.

I'll play with swapping IDE, I'll let you know what happens.

Thanks eversomuch for your assistance, guys.

Cheers,
Dave

[gerryf]

A most excellent job of reporting! I wish everyone was so careful and precise.

Well, what can we say...

the dhcp error and NIC error ought to correspond to the outage since you could contact the isp dhcp server to get an ip address, which your PC attempted to do when the Internet crapped out.

So no mystery

And, sorry to say, but this:

The driver has detected that device \Device\Harddisk1\DR1 has predicted that it will fail.

is your drive's SMART technology informing your motherboard it is dying

The bad blocks are attempts by your pc to access the failed drive...your pc does not know how to rephrase it.

Now, is there anything to do to get the data? Well, if you have a ton of money, someone will remove the platters and install them in another driver to extract the data, but in all liklihood this drive is toast.

It's hard to say if it was a head crash or a circuitry failure....I've been lucky with circuitry failure simple by stopping and starting computers, or by removing the drive and putting it in a plastic freezer bad and then placing it in the freezer for 2or3 hours then plugging it back in, or dropping it from about 6 inches and plugging it in, but odds are this puppy is dead.

[myspoonistoobig]

A most excellent job of reporting! I wish everyone was so careful and precise.

Well, thanks. How can I expect a thorough answer without thorough reporting?

Well, what can we say...

the dhcp error and NIC error ought to correspond to the outage since you could contact the isp dhcp server to get an ip address, which your PC attempted to do when the Internet crapped out.

So no mystery

No mystery there.

And, sorry to say, but this:

The driver has detected that device \Device\Harddisk1\DR1 has predicted that it will fail.

is your drive's SMART technology informing your motherboard it is dying

The bad blocks are attempts by your pc to access the failed drive...your pc does not know how to rephrase it.

Now, is there anything to do to get the data? Well, if you have a ton of money, someone will remove the platters and install them in another driver to extract the data, but in all liklihood this drive is toast.

It's hard to say if it was a head crash or a circuitry failure....I've been lucky with circuitry failure simple by stopping and starting computers, or by removing the drive and putting it in a plastic freezer bad and then placing it in the freezer for 2or3 hours then plugging it back in, or dropping it from about 6 inches and plugging it in, but odds are this puppy is dead.

Alright. I'll try to freeze it. If I can simply get my drive to wake up for long enough to harvest the band's mp3s, I'll be happy and I'll lay the drive to rest. I certainly don't have a ton of money to drop. I was afraid the drive was toast, but if so then why can't it read my floppy drives either? And, why did my drives up and die right out of nowhere just as my cable modem went out? Is that coincidence?

Edited by myspoonistoobig, 08 July 2005 - 12:57 PM.

[myspoonistoobig]

Drive is in the freezer. I'll pull it out around 5:00 (it's 1:43 right now) and try it again.

By the way, making it secondary slave instead of primary slave had no effect, it just made me have to play with jumpers for 15 minutes (which is always a lot of fun).

Thanks for your help ^_^

Cheers,
Dave

[makai]

I know you said you scoured goodle, but did you query Groups? A Google Groups search for "drive unreadable xp" picks up quite a few hits... over 20 pages. It seems this type failure in XP may be more common than suspected. If your data is very important (as you have said) I hope you don't give up if the freeze job fails.

Best of luck, (I hope I read some good news later!!)
makai

[myspoonistoobig]

[insert better suited frustration smiley here]

Well, now that I have taken out the E: drive and stuck it in the freezer, rejumpered both drives (HDD and CDR/RW) so that they're singles, my sound card is going on the fritz. A split second after a sound is made (a streamed music file did it the first time, that little zhoop sound that AdAware SE makes when it's finished did it a second time just now) the computer freezes, holding some strange note in the 14-16kHz range. It's ear-piercing and annoying.

I can find no problems with my sound card drivers in driver management, nor are there any IRQ conflicts to speak of. I'm scanning for virii now, but I seriously don't think I'm gonna find anything...

Does it ever end? :/

[myspoonistoobig]

Hey Makai,

Thanks for the tip on Google Groups. I totally did not even think of that.

I didn't find anything useful until I put in "drive fat32 unformatted xp". Perhaps DOS may still be able to read it? If so, then I may just be able to salvage my data the hard way (let's xcopy 3000+ files!!!) but it'll be better than nothing.

I'm gonna pull my disk out of the freezer and give it a shot. Worst that can happen is it doesn't work, right?

[myspoonistoobig]

Not only did it not work, it started making very nasty clacking noises. Methinks the drive is gefukt.

[gerryf]

I would tend to agree....leave it out over night.

The sound card cannot be related....did you ground yourself before removing the drive to avoid static shock?

I would just start the PC, then turn it off, with the harddrive unmounted (in hand, on book next to case)....start it 20 times and see if it grabs.....


but it sounds like total drive failure.

[gerryf]

btw, with the drive out, does the floppy drive work?