My pc is half dead. Hardware or software problem?

[NervousNovice]

It happened like this:

I'm in WinXP and tried to restart my pc. Softwares were closing and I saw an error msg window poped up. The pc shut down so fast I couldn't see what's on it.

After that, it couldn't load the Windows. The screen stays where the Windows Logo appears with the process bar below it moving (it moves!) There's no active HDD light/sound. I guess there is actually nothing loading.

I tried to load from safe mode, but the DOS loading screen stayed at the line "Multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINDOWS\System32\Drivers\Mup.sys" for a long time and then a blue screen appeared saying "c0000218 Unknown hard error".

I tried to use the Windows CD. When I chose to repair the installed WinXP, it did nothing and exited. I also tried to reinstall the whole WinXP. It showed that I have a 76G NTFS paritition (I use my 80G HDD with C: only).

When I tried to delete that partition, it said the partition cannot be deleted and the drive cannot be accessed. Then a blue screen appeared, saying "problem occured and Windows is shut down to prevent damage" and a bunch of stuff belows it.

Can any expert tell me what had possibily happened? Is it software problem? Windows problem? Or my harddisk problem? What action should I take now?

Help is greatly appreciated.

 

[3LEMENT0]

How old is your HDD? Is your powersupply reliable? Is your system overclocked? Check them one by one. good luck

 

[mechBgon]

What brand and model of hard drive is this? I'm thinking you may want to run a HDD diagnostic using the manufacturer's diagnostic utility. I listed the HDD manu's utility-download pages here down the page a ways.

Any chance you picked up a virus? Did you have your firewall up and your antivirus software running and up-to-date? Engaging in any behavior that raises your risk factors (warez, file-sharing, etc)?

 

[NervousNovice]

I have a Zalman 300W psu and I'm pretty sure it's well under my consumption. My AMD2500+ is not overclocked either.

I just built my pc a few days ago. It's a Seagate 80G SATA harddisk (pretty disappointing if it died like this, so quick).

For the last few days I was downloading safe softwares (big name general stuff), no p2p, no dangerous stuff. I even had latest Norton and ZoneAlarm up running before going online too.

Let me go get the Seagate tool and check.

 

[mechBgon]

When you go to do the reinstall, you're pressing F6 and feeding Windows Setup your SATA driver on a floppy diskette, right?

 

[NervousNovice]

Originally posted by: mechBgon
When you go to do the reinstall, you're pressing F6 and feeding Windows Setup your SATA driver on a floppy diskette, right?

Yes. I remember you were the one who told me the Asus A7V600 CD has a little program called "makedisk.exe" a few days ago.

I installed Windows XP a few days ago using the same CD on the pc too, and it worked at that time.

 

[mechBgon]

Originally posted by: NervousNovice

Originally posted by: mechBgon
When you go to do the reinstall, you're pressing F6 and feeding Windows Setup your SATA driver on a floppy diskette, right?

Yes. I remember you were the one who told me the Asus A7V600 CD has a little program called "makedisk.exe" a few days ago.

Oh yeah, I remember now You might want to try booting and choosing the Repair option at the first prompt that offers Repair, then choose Recovery Console and go to the command-line prompt and see if you can format the C:\ partition there. Or use Seagate's utility to write all zeros to the drive maybe.

 

[NervousNovice]

I entered WinXP CD Recovery Console. I typed "1" to logon to my nly Windows installation in C:\ When it prompted for admin password, I hit "Enter" (because I didn't set password before).

Then it shows at follow:

C:\WINDOWS>dir (I typed dir)
The volume in drive C has no label.
The volume Serial NUmber is 748a-4667

Directory of C:\WINDOWS

An error occurred during directory enumeration.

C:\WINDOWS>format c:
CAUTION: All data on non-removeable disk
drive C: will be lost!
Proceed with Format (Y/N)?y

C:\WINDOWS>

What else can I do there?

 

[mechBgon]

You mean it won't let you format C:? Then I'd try Seagate's disk utility and write zeros to the drive (and give it an extended fitness test too). You have nothing left to lose at this point, doesn't look like

 

[NervousNovice]

I ran the Seagate SeaTools diagnostics test. Failure as follow:

File Structure Test Result: Failed
Partition 1 (No Label) Result: Failed with critical Errors

It said such failure may be caused lock-up or failure to shutdown Windows correctly (I did restart my pc probably before it died).

I didn't run the complete surface scan result. Should I do that also?

Edit: Let me try the write zero thing now.

 

[yhelothar]

don't do the zero thing.. just RMA the drive... it's broken.

 

[NervousNovice]

A good news and a bad news:

GOOD: I used Seagate DiscWizard (another program) to setup the NTFS boot sector on the same HDD (and essentially erased everything). Now I can delete partition as normal, it seems I can install WinXP with no problem now.

BAD: What if it happens again? Erase everything?

I'll run a complete surface scan again using SeaTool. Should I do a fill zero operation on the HDD now to clean it all once more? Is there a reliable test (in DOS) I can run to make sure that my HDD is not defected ?

 

[Cosmic_Horror]

i would run the surface scan and see how that goes.

If you don't feel confidant with the hard drive have it replaced, otherwise i would just re-install everything and see how it goes.

 

[NervousNovice]

I ran a complete surface test. The result showed that it passed with a minor I/O error in a sector (with a long number which I forgot). I think just a little part of the harddisk is dead. On the other hand, the file structure test was unsupported. (I guess it is because the HDD is not set up for any file structure yet.)

Do you think my HDD is dead or corrupted or has problems? I'll do a write-zero operation.

Honestly I don't have much confident with this HDD now I bought it in a computer store. It passed the first 7 days store replacement already but is still covered by the manufacture 1 year warranty. How can I replace it for another one then? (I mean, how can I go to the store and tell that guy "the HDD had a problem before but now it seems to be fixed and I can install Windows with no problems?" and he said "ok??")