BSOD (MACHINE_CHECK_EXCEPTION) + weird gray "progress meter" on reboot = Disk Read Error

[WAZ]

Last night I booted up my PC. It wasn't on for more than a minute when I went to open Firefox. It was unresponsive for maybe 30 seconds when it suddenly gave me a BSOD with an error message about a "MACHINE_CHECK_EXCEPTION" and a message saying the computer was shut down before any damage could be done.

So I rebooted, it passed the BIOS/boot screens fine, but when it got to where Windows SHOULD load, all I had was a black screen with a gray "progress bar" on the bottom, spanning the whole width of the screen. After about 10 seconds the "progress bar" started to fill up very slowly. Assuming that was not a good thing, I quickly shut it down.

Tried rebooting with the WinXP CD and was just going to install Windows fresh over the old installation.... only Windows Setup read the partitions as [Unknown] instead of [NTFS]... saying I'd have to reformat. It did read that there were two partitions of the right sizes; just not as properly formatted partitions. Naturally I did not reformat.

Now when I boot up, I get a "disk read error, please press ALT+CTRL+DEL to reboot" message and the computer will not boot. Is there a virus that would cause this? What was the weird gray progress bar? Seemed to me like it was suddenly formatting my drive or something weird, but that could just be paranoia.

Either way, this has rendered my drive unbootable... and worse yet, even KNOPPIX can't read the C: partition (though it can read the D: -- which is unfortunately just MP3's and random crap.... ALL of my important stuff is on C: ) .

Is there anything I can do to get this to boot again? Or is my drive screwed?

 

[WAZ]

bump

 

[Mark R]

Almost certainly, a dead hard drive. Try the manufacturer's disk check program.

Would be worth checking drive cable and IDE port (swap drives C and D around).

RMA the drive if it fails and is in warranty. Chuck it in the trash if it's out of warranty.

 

[WAZ]

Is that what that gray progress bar would indicate?

I tried a new cable with no luck and will try the WD Diagnostics tonight.

Last time I had a bad crash where Windows couldn't read the drive, KNOPPIX (Linux) was able to mount it and I burned off DVDs of stuff I needed.... this time, with KNOPPIX unable to mount it (it gives me an "input/output error), I'm scared. If I can't access the data on it, this would be devastating.... I have a LOT of important stuff on there....

 

[WAZ]

Anyone else see anything like this?

I'm mostly curious if it's a virus (i.e. info still salvageable, even though KNOPPIX can't mount the volume) or if it's a hardware failure, the drive is screwed and I need to buy/RMA a new hard drive. The bottom line is I CAN'T lose the stuff on the drive....

 

[Mark R]

Is the progress bar, the Win XP boot progress bar?

WinXP does put one up during the early stages of booting, but it fills so quickly that it's gone in a fraction of a second. However, if the hard drive is screwed, and working extremely slowly, then this could definitely keep the progress bar up for many seconds.

Basically, try the WD diagnostic - but it sounds like the drive is screwed and you've lost the data on it.

If you really, really must have the data on it, and there are no backups then you should stop right now. Disconnect the drive, do not power it up again. Contact a professional data recovery service and ask for their advice. Essentially, if the drive is malfunctioning, then everything you do to it while it is running can make it worse. If you do decide to send it to a specialist, expect the bill to be anything up to $500 - $2000.

If you aren't prepared to pony up the cash, and the drive won't mount, then there isn't much that you can usefully do. Some people have had some success with freezing the drive, and then powering it up while it's still frozen - but this is pretty much a do or die approach. If it doesn't work, then it's certainly not going to do the drive any good.

 

[WAZ]

Hmm... good question on the XP load bar. If it loads that quickly I'm not sure what it looks like.

Here is an animated GIF I made of exactly what my screen looked like:

MY SCREEN

This lasted about 10 seconds, slowly filling this lone, gray bar at the bottom, before I shut it down. Now I don't get this bar at all; just the disk read error instead.

 

[Friday]

I hate to be the one to break this to you, but from my experience, your hard drive is failing miserably. I think you already know this, but looking for confirmation.

MarkR has a good tip that I have also heard as well, which is to freeze the drive overnight in a freezer (being careful not to get moisture on it beforehand), and then quicky putting it into a PC.

A great tool I use is from a downloadable ISO from a website that offers the "Ultimate Boot CD-ROM". That tool is called salvation hard drive and recovery. I use it often to check for the existance of bad clusters. The only downside of running this tool, especially in your case, is that just running the tool creates even more risks of producing even more bad clusters.

Good luck and I hope you are able to get some of your needed data using some sort of hard drive tool, such as knoppix or placing the drive into an external USB enclosure and attempting to get the data via another PC.

 

[Paperdoc]

IF you can't get it to work easily AND you can't afford the big bucks for pro data recovery, there are some utility programs that can help you do it yourself. But first you better know what you're doing, or be prepared to learn!

A few versions back, Norton Utilities had something like this, and I'm sure others do / did. The utility suite would allow you to make a complete clone of your faulty disk - it copied absolutely eveything slavishly, whether it made sense or not. Then you could remove and set aside the faulty disk and go at the copy with the data recovery tools. You would start with their automated disk checkers. If they didn't solve everything, then there were undelete and unformat tools to bring back some things. More tools allowed you to fix up a corrupted Master Boot Block and Partition Tables. And ultimately you could try to manually find and recover files, but that is a VERY long and demanding process.

Many of these tools are dangerous in unskilled hands because they let you manipulate anything you like on the hard drive, meaning you can create even more problems than you had, if you do it wrong. That's why I said, be prepared to learn how to do it right.

If you try this route, be SURE the utility suite you buy has full support for the drive you have. For example, earlier versions of Norton Utilities could do all this for a FAT16 or FAT32 drive, but not for an NTFS system. Recent ones may be able to, but ask carefully whether ALL the tools actually CAN be applied to your NTFS drive.

 

[WAZ]

I hate to be the one to break this to you, but from my experience, your hard drive is failing miserably. I think you already know this, but looking for confirmation.

Heh, yeah, that's the feeling deep in my stomach... but having never seen that gray loading bar on bootup (and given how suddenly this happened -- no problems in 2+ years, then one day I get a BSOD crash, the gray bar, and a disk read error out of nowhere) had me hoping a virus ganked the drive a bit and I can still salvage the important stuff... turning this into little more than a $75 investment in a new drive and/or a several-day annoyance.

Either way, even if the old drive is toast, I'll live, as long as I can rescue most of the old data first. I believe I already have the "Ultimate Boot CD" at home so I'll give that Salvation program a shot... thanks for the heads-up on that.... and I still have to try the WD Diagnostics, too.

I went ahead and ordered a new SATA hard drive today, so when it gets here I'll get Windows up and running on that, then see if it can read the bad IDE drive. If it can, then awesome, and I can hopefully just drag the old stuff over (right?).... if not, I also have Norton SystemWorks 2004, I think, which had Norton Ghost and some other utilities. To use that would I need another 160-GB IDE drive (identical to the bad one)?

Thanks for the replies guys.

 

[WAZ]

Hmm... anyone have experience with this?

http://www.drive-backup.com/home/personal/disk_imaging.htm

Paragon Drive Backup...