Mum said there would be days like...

[NaRyan]

F***ING THIS!!!!!!!

Geez what fun I have had the last 24 or so hours.
Started off when I decided to defrag my hard drive on my main computer.
Closed all the poop down, set it off defraging (using perfectdisk), toddled off to shop, came back, poota had crashed.

Powered off, powered back on, BSOD city, tried 1001 things to make it work, no joy, re-installed Windows XP x64 (deleted partition, re-created, ect), Installed all the 164MB+ of updates, all ma poop, started defrag.
It crashed again!
Took out all my hard drives!!!!!
750GB of stuff gone (and nope not even Acronis could save me )

Evevery swear word known to mankind used!
Used several HDD testing tools, all say drives are fine (err wot?)
All drives are Maxtor SATA2 (the maxtor HDD testing tool don't see them!)
All partitions re-created (as they were all in raw format after the crash), then full format done on them rather than quick.

Installed Vista x64 Ultimate (since I bought the stupid thing ages ago), even though that's cost me 1GB of ram, Trust me to have the one motherboard in the universe that won't work with 4GB of ram with VISTA x64 (Gigabyte M55S-S3 <- Avoid at all costs if you go AMD socket AM2), and yes all 4GB of memory does work fine, it's been tested to death & works fine in Windows XP x64 and Linux x64.

Got ME2 sorry Vista installed, done the updates, installed perfectdisk and it crashed again....
Tried another defrag program, it crashed, then another same result

At the mo running a prog called HDD Regenerator on the boot drive (250GB) but by the looks of things it's going to take about 6 or more hours to do, and I still have 2 more drives to scan, a 320GB & a 500GB.

Oh and to top it all off part of the bathroom celing (right above the toilet), has fallen down, and I now have a leak in there, right on top of the toilet!
Need to plan ma err needs round the weather now geez.

And you think I was stressed from stopping smoking, heh me got smoke coming out moi ears *chews 10 pices of gum*

ahhhh rant over, you can come out from behind the sofa now peeps.
*gets teddys at the ready

[UBT - mickyb69]

Hang in there M8 its bound to be something stupid  :lol:
P.S I got a spare umbrella if you need the loo  :shock:
(why have i got a pic of you in my head sitting on the loo singing "under my
umbrella eh eh eh eh oh oh eh eh")  :lol:

[NaRyan]

*Throws the hard drive at UBT - mickyb69 instead of teddy
*plugs teddy into poota see if that works....

[UBT - Timbo]

F***ING THIS!!!!!!!

Geez what fun I have had the last 24 or so hours.......

Hi,

I really do sympathise with you......!

But to put your situation into perspective....

My ENTIRE webhosting farm suddenly stopped serving emails (last Thursday) for EVERY client (including my own!).

That's 15 servers hosting gawd knows how many clients on each one....!

It's taken me since then to track down the problem and now start rolling out the tweaks to each and every client....

Will take me the best part of another week to have it all sorted....

Thanks to CentOS !!!!!

regards

Tim

[NaRyan]

Jinkies and TSP moved to them on Friday

[melter65]

I'm one of the least knowledgable members of the forum and can only go on what I've heard, but have you tried  the Spinrite recovery disk?

Here's a link to the Spinrite homepage. They are always talking about it on Leo Laport's various tech podcasts, but I know it's not a freebie.

Hope this helps!

[NaRyan]

It's not a hard drive fault.
All 3 check out 100%
it even does it with a brand new drive

I have 3 drives, all Maxtor SATA2, a 250GB, a 320GB & a 500GB
(call em a,b,c from now on)

If I install OS to a I can defrag b & c ok , but not a
If I install OS to b I can defrag a & c ok , but not b
If I install OS to c I can defrag a & b ok , but not c

I have tried, Windows XP, Windows XP X64, Vista x86 & Vista X64 on all drives.
I have ran about 20 different HDD testing tools, many long hours!
I have low level formatted each drive (many long hours!)
I have used new SATA cables, tried one drive at a time, danced about naked while doing a sacred chant.

However I just cannot defrag the drive the OS is installed on without it crashing within a minute, and it is ONLY defrag that is causing it!
And it does not matter what OS or defrag program is used.

But if I use a "Livecd" and defrag from that, I can defrag all 3 drives fine!

I have had many a weird PC problem in all my years of using and fixing them, but never one as unique as this.

Oh well least I can have fun watching all my stuff download on Steam again....
And lol at firefox transfer speed of infinity..... COOL!!!

[Ben]

I would stay well away from Maxtor drives, even now i hear of friends of mine, and my dad who works as an ICT Technician using every swear word in the english and french dictionary at them  

Maxtor = problems.  :!:

[UBT - Timbo]

It's not a hard drive fault.
All 3 check out 100%
it even does it with a brand new drive

I have 3 drives, all Maxtor SATA2, a 250GB, a 320GB & a 500GB
(call em a,b,c from now on)

If I install OS to a I can defrag b & c ok , but not a
If I install OS to b I can defrag a & c ok , but not b
If I install OS to c I can defrag a & b ok , but not c

I have tried, Windows XP, Windows XP X64, Vista x86 & Vista X64 on all drives.
I have ran about 20 different HDD testing tools, many long hours!
I have low level formatted each drive (many long hours!)
I have used new SATA cables, tried one drive at a time, danced about naked while doing a sacred chant.

However I just cannot defrag the drive the OS is installed on without it crashing within a minute, and it is ONLY defrag that is causing it!
And it does not matter what OS or defrag program is used.

But if I use a "Livecd" and defrag from that, I can defrag all 3 drives fine!

I have had many a weird PC problem in all my years of using and fixing them, but never one as unique as this.

Oh well least I can have fun watching all my stuff download on Steam again....
And lol at firefox transfer speed of infinity..... COOL!!!

Hi,

I think I can guess what the problem is - the drive that is running the OS is obviously using some part of the boot HDD to act as "virtual memory"...and I'm guessing that the defrag program doesn't understand said virtual memory and tries to move it from the HDD space it occupies and then that causes the OS to crash.

The fact you can run from a CD and presumably not use any virtual memory, is why you can defrag all three HDD's.

Can I ask exactly how much memory you have on this PC (is it enough??), is it all GOOD and 100% tested/working???

regards

Tim

[NaRyan]

The system has 3GB of Kingston DDR2 667Mhz in it.
The memory has been tested too, I also put it into a different pc and borrowed 3GB from that PC with same results.

I have done all the other things I can think of.
Check power cables
Check other cables
Take hard drives out clean any dust off them
Take Fans out clean dust off them
Clean heatsink (cpu)
Clean CPU & put new goo on and put heat sink and fan back on.
Remove and clean Video card (8800GTX)
While all cards and drives and cpu is out of system, clean motherboard of any dust.

Put snafu back together.
Make sure temps are ok under idle, 28'c CPU, 25'c Motherboard, 55'C GFX, 28 to 30'c for hard drives. (thats after 1 hour doing nothing)

Check temps after 1 hour of Boinc.
45'c CPU, 30'c Motherboard, 56'c GFX, 28 to 30'c for Hard drives.

Cooling consists of a case that has 2x25cm intake fans (front & side), 1x12cm exaust fan, AMD Stock fan and cooler (they work very well on AM2), using Rivatuner to force the 8800GTX fan to constant 100%.

I can run Boinc 24x7 no problems, run Crysis at ultra high detail (with a few tweaks) no problems for many a good hour at 1650x1080 (Got a 22" Widescreen monitor as my primary monitor and 19" 4:3 as 2nd monitor),  
Can play Supreame Commander using both monitors enabled against 2 "Sorian AI - custom AI" for several hours at high detial with no problems

Can run Prime95 on each core for several hours (usualy I get bored and quit) ok, can run 3dmark '06 ok.
Can Run an indeph virus scan (NOD32) Spybot search & destroy and Super Antispyware all at the same time (yes that is slow, but that stresses the system quiet well)

I can defrag 2 of my hard drives (not the os one) no problem.
I can do offline defrag on all 3 drives fine.
I use Perfectdisk 8 (Build 67).

However I just cannot defrag the drive the OS is running on.
I can boot to a BartPE disk and defrag the disk from that fine (but that is not as good as defraging the OS from the OS)

I am using:
AMD 6000+ (stock heatsink and fan)
Gigabyte M55S-S3 V2.0 moherboard (hate it as I cannot use all 4GB I own in Vista x64, it it not a memory fault, but a Motherboard fault, other people have same problem)
OCZ 8800GTX
3GB Kingston DDR2 Valueram (3x 1GB, is listed on gigabyte site a compatible with motherboard)
1 Maxtor DiamondMax 21 250GB 7200RPM SATA 2 8MB Cache
1 Maxtor DiamondMax 21 320GB 7200RPM SATA 2 8MB Cache
1 Seagate ST3500320AS 500GB SATA 2 7200rpm 32MB Cache
(sorry I tought they were all Maxtor)
1 Writemaster SATA DVD/RW (think it's a Samsung)
Antec Turepower Trio 650W PSU (all voltages are within norm)
Xclio A380 Super Tower (2x25cm fan version)
CMedia CMI8768+ soundcard (Dolby live version)
A Freeview TV tuner/Radio, capture card based on the Philips SAA713X chipset.
Windows Vista x64 Ultimate (all updates installed)

Apart from the weird Defrag issue, the system works 100%

[NaRyan]

I just remembered that I have made 1 big change to the system during the times that Defrag worked then did not work.

Last time Defrag worked was back in november, but I kind of kept putting it off *ahem*
However during that that time I updated my motherboard bios, as it added the support for hardware virtulization (if you run virtualpc).
I just updated the bios again (it only had listed changes that motherboard now supports AMD Phenom, and fixes detection of 1TB HDD)

So when I feel a bit more brave I will try again, as Vista's repair stuff is way better than other versions of windows.

[UBT - mickyb69]

Good luck m8