is it my hard drives failing or my OS???

[acoustic5679]

I recently have been having problems with my ide drive that I use for storage and my sata drive for my system drive so I am not sure if this is a windows xp malfuction or a hard drive malfunction. Both drives are under one year old and have worked great until now. It all started when I was installing a couple newer games. towards the end of the installation it would throw up a blue screen ( I have the picture, but no website to post it on through here) then reboot. So I tried reinstalling the program again and it would work. On my last game that I had to install it would never let me install the whole thing. It would always blue screen and reboot my cpu. After rebooting it will always stall at bios start up when its counting the memory. I have to restart my cpu from there to get it to boot properly. I was using a virtual drive on some iso's to install these programs. I scanned all files with AVG free virus scanner and they were all clean before I ever touched the iso's. I was thinking it was because of using a virtual drive on a ISO from an ide drive and installing the program to a different sata drive(should I run into problems by doing this?) But I copied the ISO to the same sata drive I was installing it to and got the same blue screen. Now, when ever I try to scan certain folders in my IDE(storage) drive with AVG, I get a blue screen from XP usually after 2-3 minutes of scanning. These folders contain old files that I had previously scanned in the past with no problems ever. I never had this AVG problem before trying to install these games. I do not get this blue screen when I scan my Sata(system) drive however. I ran defrag on my ide drive once and still get the blue screen when I scan my drive with AVG. I tried scanning online on Trend Mico's site and still got a blue screen. Nothing else seems to get a blue screen error like playing games, running other software.

Does anyone know of a good Hard disk utility to test any possible errors or malfuctions? Or does anyone have any other ideas on what this could possibly be? The only thing I can think of is either a undetectable virus/trojan, or my hard disk is failing, but its odd that one game will blue screen when I am installing it off my sata drive and not utilizing my ide drive at all. I have also ran ccleaner, registry cleaner, and spybot, and hijackthis with no apparent problems.

 

[badge]

I recently have been having problems with my ide drive that I use for storage and my sata drive for my system drive so I am not sure if this is a windows xp malfuction or a hard drive malfunction. Both drives are under one year old and have worked great until now. It all started when I was installing a couple newer games. towards the end of the installation it would throw up a blue screen ( I have the picture, but no website to post it on through here) then reboot. So I tried reinstalling the program again and it would work. On my last game that I had to install it would never let me install the whole thing. It would always blue screen and reboot my cpu. After rebooting it will always stall at bios start up when its counting the memory. I have to restart my cpu from there to get it to boot properly. I was using a virtual drive on some iso's to install these programs. I scanned all files with AVG free virus scanner and they were all clean before I ever touched the iso's. I was thinking it was because of using a virtual drive on a ISO from an ide drive and installing the program to a different sata drive(should I run into problems by doing this?) But I copied the ISO to the same sata drive I was installing it to and got the same blue screen. Now, when ever I try to scan certain folders in my IDE(storage) drive with AVG, I get a blue screen from XP usually after 2-3 minutes of scanning. These folders contain old files that I had previously scanned in the past with no problems ever. I never had this AVG problem before trying to install these games. I do not get this blue screen when I scan my Sata(system) drive however. I ran defrag on my ide drive once and still get the blue screen when I scan my drive with AVG. I tried scanning online on Trend Mico's site and still got a blue screen. Nothing else seems to get a blue screen error like playing games, running other software.

Does anyone know of a good Hard disk utility to test any possible errors or malfuctions? Or does anyone have any other ideas on what this could possibly be? The only thing I can think of is either a undetectable virus/trojan, or my hard disk is failing, but its odd that one game will blue screen when I am installing it off my sata drive and not utilizing my ide drive at all. I have also ran ccleaner, registry cleaner, and spybot, and hijackthis with no apparent problems.

You likely have a memory problem, not hard drive. In BIOS increase your memory voltage to RAM Mfg. specs and set the memory timings to specs too. You might run memtest too. Bump your memory voltage a notch.

 

[acoustic5679]

You know I wasn't going to write about it because I fixed it(I think) about 2 weeks ago I got 2 new gigs of mem so I have 4 gigs now. I tried taking the two out to see if that was cauing my problems. It didn't stop the blue screening, but I couldn't get my cpu to turn on after I put the additional two sticks back in. it would throw a bunch of beeps at me from the mobo. I had to take them out and put them in about 10 times before my cpu would boot up again. I thought my mobo's dimm slots were fried or something, but it seems to work now. I guess the memory slots on my mobo are really finicky.

I believe I ran memtest (thats the progrma you have to boot with right? and it runs it through a series of tests and keeps running passes until you press a button to reboot?) If thats it, I ran it, and it passed on every test it gave.

Since I installed 2 additional gigs of ram could it be that I need more voltage going to the memory? I would think BIOS would automatically configure that once it saw I had more memory put in. I will try that after work today.

 

[badge]

Yeah, you have to set the memory voltage to Mfg. specs in BIOS. PC6400 is 2.0-2.2v. Your problem is a classic memory issue and setting the voltage correctly will likely solve the system failure problems.

 

[acoustic5679]

Thanks so much! I can't wait to try it out!! So I have Patriot PC2-6400 memory 800mhz ddr2

It states (4-4-4-12), 2.2v

the 4-4-4-12 is the timing I am assuming so I will go in my bios to see if thats the problem. Its so stupid how XP throws up a whole page of crap to read and gives you a second or less to read it before it reboots!

 

[badge]

Absolutely. Go in BIOS and set those settings there. To have the Blue Screen stay up and the system not reboot do the following:

Right click on My Computer.
Select properties
Select the Advanced Tab.
Under 'start up and recovery' select 'settings'
under 'system failure' uncheck 'automatically restart'

The system will remain up with the BS displayed.

 

[acoustic5679]

The only thing on my gigabyte cmos set up utility is a overvoltage control and you can basically raise it .1, .2 and so on. I am going to call them to see if this bios has a feature to change these settings I am looking for. AVG does pick up Shell32.dll when ever I scan any part of the drive and right away too. Its labeled as a change under result/infection. Any ideas?

 

[badge]

Which MB do you have. The model number.

 

[acoustic5679]

gigabyte GA-965P-S3

 

[Shadow703793]

Download UBCD and run SeaTools(or the one that matches your HDD) and Memtest86+ to determine RAM/HDD problems

Link:
http://www.ultimatebootcd.com/

 

[badge]

You have the P965 chipset, so the BIOS should have adjustments for the RAM voltage and timings. You would have to make the adjustments in BIOS.

 

[rwpritchett]

Gigabyte boards require you to press Ctrl-F1 while in the BIOS to reveal advanced settings such as memory timings.

 

[acoustic5679]

Thanks. I couldn't find that anywhere in the manual.

I switched it to 4-4-4-12

I still get a blue screen when scanning my ide drive. I scanned each individual folder in the ide drive with no blue screen, but when I scan the whole D: drive thats when it blue screens.

I can't find the voltage setting for the memory in the bios, so I did not get to change that yet. Do you think it would be ok to raise over voltage up a notch?

There are also these setting in my bios below the 4 regular timing options
Act to act delay(trrd)
rank read to write delay
write to precharge delay
refresh to act delay
read to precharge delay

I left these alone though.

On my BIOS settings for memory timing I chnaged it, but only the highlighted numbers are changed
Example
5 4
5 4
5 4
16 12
the numbers on the left are what it used to be and the numbers on the right are what I changed it to which are highlighted. Is this just showing me what the default would be for the numbers on the left if I were not to go into manual mode and switch them to 4-4-4-12? I am just trying to figure out if my bios is really loading my 4-4-4-12 settings.


on the blue screen it states this at the bottom everytime
Stop : 0x000000F4 (0X00000003,0X8A242BC0,OX8A242D34,0X805D11F8)

THEN IT STATES BEGGINING DEUMP OF PHYSICAL MEMORY

 

[badge]

Can you run check disk from windows.

Double click on my computer
Right click on your OS hard drive.
Click on Properties
Select 'Tools'
Select 'check now'
Select 'automatically fix file system errors' and scan and attempt recovery of bad sectors.

Restart the system until a disk check occurs. Let it run all 5 stages.

 

[badge]

If the check disk doesn't solve the problem, you may have to do a repair of the OS by booting to the Window CD. Gotta' drive home soon, so maybe someone can guide you through that.

 

[acoustic5679]

Thanks a bunch for your help

I will do this error checking on both drives.

 

[badge]

From the blue screen error message you are getting it looks like you may have some corrumpted files along the way, can't really say for sure. Maybe a check disk can repair the OS. If not, you should probably try a repair of the OS by booting to the Windows CD to the 'second' repair console.

Bumping the memory slightly past Mfg. specs is ok, but going to far could damage the memory.

 

[badge]

Five stages of disk check takes quite a while. Let it run though.

 

[badge]

The Ultimate boot CD shadow suggested is a good idea. I use it too, but usually for memory test. Run any HD check from that program if possible.

 

[acoustic5679]

I am currently dling it. Thanks! I will lose all data such as save points in games and anything on my OS drive if I do a repair right? If none of these disk checks work and ultimate boot disk doesn't work, would you suggest using Dban(or another data erasing program) on both drives to get a fresh start? I have been using dban for years, but its a pain to reinstall everything overagain. Exspecially the XP updates. Thanks again for your help!!!

 

[badge]

If someone knows exactly what that Blue Screen message pertains too, it would be great to reply here. I'm thinking corupted OS files. I suppose the BS could be hardware related (hard drive? or even RAM?).

If you do a repair booting to the Windows disk, it should not wreck you files. You will likely haveto go online and get a lot of MS updates because the disk will repair the OS files back to what is on the disk. Any updates past that will have to be rinstalled. The only hard drive I ever had fail directly on me locked the system up completely and I couldn't get back up into the OS.

 

[acoustic5679]

yeah. All my backed up files that are of any importance are on my storage drive which is also the drive I am getting the BS when I AVG scan it. I just have to find my saved game files and things like that I suppose. check disk is still going through the ide drive. After that I will check disk the OS drive. If I still get a BS after that I will try all the utilities on that Ultimate boot cd and if all that fails I will repair the OS through the windows cd. Thanks again for your help! You are awesome!

 

[hbohn123]

Can't you just view the dump files and see what the cause is?

 

[ghmage]

My mistake.

 

[acoustic5679]

Where do I view the dump files from the BS?