$20 to whomever can fix this!

[Stan]

So heres the deal -- help me figure out what the hell my issue is, and I'll toss a $20 via paypal your way.


I have three harddrives, all newish in this machine.

Two 120GB Maxtors on seperate IDE channels, and a 400GB Western Digi on the SATA bus, all onboard. The machine is running Windows XP SP2 with minimal drivers (ie, video, windows update drivers, wifi drivers). Not much else installed.

The machine is rock solid, and runs great! The only issue is that if I download a file, its currupted. If I download a torrent -- its currupted. Small files seem to be just fine. I ran spinrite 6.0 on all of the drives (up to 5%) and it worked just fine! Memtest 86+ ran through all its tests perfectly. I ran Ubuntu for a while, and never had issues that I know of (I only a 20gb harddrive, so I never downloaded anything large by any means).

I downloaded Adobe Flex Beta 3 from Adobe.com 5 times and it was currupted each time. I downloaded it on my laptop, copied ot over SMB to this desktop, and it was currupt. But when I extracted it on the laptop, and copied it over extracted, it was fine!

So thoughts? I am using Bart's Stuff Test (google it) and it fails on all drives randomly

Error Screen: http://brinkerhoff.org/error.jpg

I have a Athlon 3700+, 1gb ram, etc. Heres the info from CPUID

Name AMD Athlon 64 3700+
Codename ClawHammer
Specification AMD Athlon(tm) 64 Processor 3700+
Package Socket 754
CPUID F.4.A
Extended CPUID F.4
Core Stepping SH7-CG
Technology 0.13 um
Core Speed 2399.8 MHz (12.0 x 200.0 MHz)

Northbridge VIA K8M400 (VT8380) rev. 00
Southbridge VIA VT8237 rev. 00
Graphic Interface AGP
AGP Revision 3.0
AGP Transfer Rate 8x
AGP SBA supported, enabled
Memory Type DDR
Memory Size 1024 MBytes
Channels Single
Memory Frequency 200.0 MHz (CPU/12)
CAS# 2.5
RAS# to CAS# 3
RAS# Precharge 3
Cycle Time (tRAS) 7
Bank Cycle Time (tRC) 11
DRAM Idle Timer 16
Command Rate 1T

DIMM #1

General
Memory type DDR
Manufacturer (ID) PDP Systems (7F7F7F7F7F020000)
Size 1024 MBytes
Max bandwidth PC3200 (200 MHz)
Part number

Hardware monitor
-----------------------------------------------------

AMD Athlon 64 3700+ hardware monitor

Temperature sensor 0 49°C (120°F) [0x62] (core #0)

Dump hardware monitor


DMI Baseboard
-------------
vendor unknown
model K8M800-8237
revision unknown
serial unknown

 

[Stan]

D:\share>dir archive.rar
Volume in drive D is Internal ATA (120)
Volume Serial Number is 749D-C3D7

Directory of D:\share

11/25/2007 05:01 AM 325,834,369 archive.rar
1 File(s) 325,834,369 bytes
0 Dir(s) 44,719,534,080 bytes free

** copy file with Windows **

D:\share>dir h:\share\archive.rar
Volume in drive H is Internal SATA (400)
Volume Serial Number is 3C89-4DBE

Directory of h:\share

11/25/2007 05:01 AM 325,834,369 archive.rar
1 File(s) 325,834,369 bytes
0 Dir(s) 304,777,007,104 bytes free

D:\share>sha1sum archive.rar
1fe0363b78d0873ce416249a0911eadb268436d7 archive.rar
d5df7eceea4f0fd2c4dd923712af8108801bad5c h:\share\archive.rar

What the hell?

 

[robisbell]

I'd run the HDD diagnostics and also, what sort of connection do you use, and what software are you using to download and what file types mainly?

 

[Stan]

Robishell,

Spinrite is supposed to be one of the defacto drive test applications out there, and while I only ran it through 5%, it reported no problems, whereas when I copy a file (archive.rar) from drive to drive, it randomly craps out (but mind you, xcopy and Windows shell BOTH seem to think its ok, or don't report any errors.... immediately anyways..).

I have a cable modem, and download/work on all kinds of files. I found this issue because a few of my RAW images from my camera were currupted when I copied them to the desktop from my laptop, and most of the ISO images I have had for years no longer work (ie, works copy of Office 2003 is now currupted -- my ISO of Visual Studio from work is currupted -- adobe CS3 wont install correctly. All these have worked for ages, but now are corrupted. The only time I noticed this was when I downloaded a torrent of an application to try, which had a bad ISO (that I attributed to a bad torrent), then the Adobe Flex app download (from Adobe.com mind you, completely legit, and worked fine on the laptop), and now my corrupt ISO images, and drive to drive copy failures.

It seems like a motherboard issue -- but I can't imagine why it would randomly not work.. across different controllers.. with no crashes.. and no obvious other signs than bad files occasionally.

 

[Quiksilver]

How about running spinrite (or whatever) until its completely finished?
Also have you tried unhooking any of the drives and see if the problem remains?
Lastly is their anything showing in the event log?

You also might want to have a look at this:
http://hddguru.com/content/en/software/2005.10.02-MHDD/

 

[robisbell]

I'd run the Manufacturers diagnostic. I do not trust software pitched by a former marketing person with no real tech experience, and prone to using FUD to sell his products and ideas.

 

[dclive]

Originally posted by: Stan
Robishell,

Spinrite is supposed to be one of the defacto drive test applications out there, and while I only ran it through 5%, it reported no problems, whereas when I copy a file (archive.rar) from drive to drive, it randomly craps out (but mind you, xcopy and Windows shell BOTH seem to think its ok, or don't report any errors.... immediately anyways..).

I have a cable modem, and download/work on all kinds of files. I found this issue because a few of my RAW images from my camera were currupted when I copied them to the desktop from my laptop, and most of the ISO images I have had for years no longer work (ie, works copy of Office 2003 is now currupted -- my ISO of Visual Studio from work is currupted -- adobe CS3 wont install correctly. All these have worked for ages, but now are corrupted. The only time I noticed this was when I downloaded a torrent of an application to try, which had a bad ISO (that I attributed to a bad torrent), then the Adobe Flex app download (from Adobe.com mind you, completely legit, and worked fine on the laptop), and now my corrupt ISO images, and drive to drive copy failures.

It seems like a motherboard issue -- but I can't imagine why it would randomly not work.. across different controllers.. with no crashes.. and no obvious other signs than bad files occasionally.

Send me MPSReports output (see my .sig) and I'll take a look at the errors you're getting.

 

[robisbell]

how is he supposed to run it when nothing can be downloaded without it being corrupted, hmmm?

 

[dclive]

Originally posted by: robisbell
how is he supposed to run it when nothing can be downloaded without it being corrupted, hmmm?

Did floppies and USB thumbdrives stop working? No? Then there's two obvious ways right there; I'm sure there are other ways too.

 

[robisbell]

how is he supposed to put it on either when they'll be corrupted, stop assuming and try asking first.

 

[dclive]

Originally posted by: robisbell
how is he supposed to put it on either when they'll be corrupted, stop assuming and try asking first.

Once *again*:

1. Put it onto his system via floppy.
2. Put it onto his system via USB stick.
3. Put it onto his system via download; the file is only 750KB, and he's said small downloads download just fine.

And you did catch that he's got a laptop that works fine, right? That would handle all of the downloading if all of the above didn't work, which I suspect it would.

Take it easy Robisbell. Let other people chime in with their advice; it's a public forum.

 

[robisbell]

So what we have is a situation in which a user attempts to download a file with Internet Explorer, which contacts the remote site, starts the download, and then gives up part of the way through the download, storing a truncated initial portion of the complete file in the user's destination directory and the browser cache, while providing the user no indication whatsoever that anything is amiss. Neither does the browser's interaction with the Web site indicate any problem has occurred: the Web transfer log invariably shows a complete download with the entire file transferred and a normal completion status.

Even worse, Internet Explorer now has a copy of the truncated download in its browser cache (which it calls ?Temporary Internet files?), and if the user attempts to download the file again in the hope that the corruption is a random event which won't repeat, Explorer will act like it's downloading the file, but actually just copy the truncated version from the cache. Hence, unless the user manually clears the cache (instructions for which are given below), he can go on retrying the download until the cows come home, the Sun rises in the west, and Microsoft starts shipping quality products, with the same truncated file resulting from each and every download attempt.


The Solution

Use a Better Browser


and I also think he has a HDD issue as well.

 

[dclive]

Your original post was much more interesting:
"he did not say he has a laptop, he said he used a laptop, you assume he has one without asking. what if he had no other computers, hmmm?"

Honestly, take it easy, chill out, and try being nice to people.

Your theory blaming MS Internet Explorer is wrong too. If you read his original post, he says when he copies large files via SMB from notebook to desktop the file is corrupt as well, and obviously Internet Explorer isn't involved in that.

 

[dclive]

Originally posted by: robisbell
So what we have is a situation in which a user attempts to download a file with Internet Explorer, which contacts the remote site, starts the download, and then gives up part of the way through the download, storing a truncated initial portion of the complete file in the user's destination directory and the browser cache, while providing the user no indication whatsoever that anything is amiss. Neither does the browser's interaction with the Web site indicate any problem has occurred: the Web transfer log invariably shows a complete download with the entire file transferred and a normal completion status.

Even worse, Internet Explorer now has a copy of the truncated download in its browser cache (which it calls ?Temporary Internet files?), and if the user attempts to download the file again in the hope that the corruption is a random event which won't repeat, Explorer will act like it's downloading the file, but actually just copy the truncated version from the cache. Hence, unless the user manually clears the cache (instructions for which are given below), he can go on retrying the download until the cows come home, the Sun rises in the west, and Microsoft starts shipping quality products, with the same truncated file resulting from each and every download attempt.


The Solution

Use a Better Browser


and I also think he has a HDD issue as well.

Here's the post I was commenting on.

 

[robisbell]

if he uses IE to access the laptop, then yes it is an issue, you assume to much and think MS is without fault. rather hear back from the OP and you can offer your advice and I'll give mine.

 

[dclive]

Originally posted by: robisbell
if he uses IE to access the laptop, then yes it is an issue, you assume to much and think MS is without fault. rather hear back from the OP and you can offer your advice and I'll give mine.

MSIE, on a local LAN, for SMB?

Anyway, if the OP could run MPS Reports (see my .sig) we'll get some things we can look at, and perhaps see a pattern / problem. An obvious solution is to check the network card drivers.

 

[btcomm1]

Don't know if you found out the problem or not, perhaps you can try different IDE cables.

Also lets what happens when you copy a file from a flash drive to any of the 3 hard drives? Are they corrupted no matter which drive you copy to? Either IDE or the sata drive?

You can boot off of bartpe and copy a file from a flash to the drive and see if the corruption still happens. If it still happens booted from bartpe then we could at least rule out a windows problem, which it probably isn't.

 

[Err0r404]

hmm, usually when i started to get errors like that, i'd RMA the drive beside, both maxtor and WD have reputation for f'd up drives after a bit of usage. I recommand doing a HD Diag (obviously you will need to get it some where else and make a floopy boot disk)

If it isn't drive failure, from experience, it's usually because of my overclocking...apprently data get f'd up due to IDE clocks being too high. (in your case this shouldn't be a problem but yours is rather old board?) the only way to truely test something like this a process of elimination, go pick up a HD, install new OS on that drive. If you pick up maxtor, they comes with hd diagnostic sofware in their retail packages., might solve two birds with one stone and return the hard drive if you don't need

 

[KurskKnyaz]

do the files become corrupt when you save them on other drives as well or just the drive to which your OS is installed onto? Tr saving a download to a different drive and see if it corrupts.

 

[KurskKnyaz]

subscription bump

 

[dball3]

check firewalls,and network cards. and anyother programs u may be using for internet traffic. If u have a router check the settings in there as well

 

[robisbell]

okay, no posts in almost 3 days, think we need to wait and see if they've done anything or not.

 

[Stan]

Sorry! I am still here!

...user attempts to download a file with Internet Explorer, which contacts the remote site, st...

The problem is clearly not IE. Please see my second post, where I am copying with xcopy, with the verify flag, and it still shows no error, but copies a corrupt file. (ps-I also use Firefox)

if he uses IE to access the laptop, then yes it is an issue, you assume to much and think MS is without fault.

I copied from Laptop (IE) to PC (SMB) both times, full file, and extracted files. (extracted to laptop, then copied over) -- but laptop was running IE to copy these files.

Originally posted by: dball3
check firewalls,and network cards. and anyother programs u may be using for internet traffic. If u have a router check the settings in there as well

No firewall (except XP SP2 Firewall), network card -- interesting -- It has a wireless NIC I can try, but that doesnt address drive to drive copy issues? -- Router isnt an issue (so say 3 out of 4 pc's on my network).

 

[robisbell]

have you run the HDD diagnostics from the HDD manufacturer yet? if not, need those done, and the results posted.

an post a tracert to http://www.usps.com, and http://www.bbc.co.uk post the results of both.

 

[Stan]

Originally posted by: robisbell
have you run the HDD diagnostics from the HDD manufacturer yet?

It happens on three independent drives (2 max, one western digital). I really don't think its a drive issue, but I will run them.

Originally posted by: robisbell
an post a tracert to http://www.usps.com, and http://www.bbc.co.uk post the results of both.

http://www.brinkerhoff.org/an...ch/bbc.co.uk.txt
http://www.brinkerhoff.org/an...ch/usps.txt

replace an...ch with anandtech