Computer won't boot up

[mjrpes3]

Just a half hour ago, I was using my computer as normal without problem, when suddenly my monitor went into 'standby mode'. I rebooted, and the power turned on, along with the harddrive spinning, but nothing displayed on screen, not even any initial message from the BIOS. It doesn't seem to be a video card problem, because although the hard drive is spinning there is no activity from it, meaning that Windows is not booting up, and along with that the the laser on my mouse is not lighting up as usual.

I have completely turned off the computer, turning the power switch off in the back, and left it like that for 10 minutes. But upon turning it on, it still won't show even a BIOS message on screen.

Given that if it was a problem with memory or hard drive, I would think there'd at least be a BIOS error message on screen, this is leading me to believe it's a problem with the motherboard. Any thoughts?

System:

ASRock 939Dual-SATA2 Socket 989 ULi M1695 ATX AMD Motherboard
SeaSonic S12-330 ATX12V 330V Power Supply
AMD Athlon 64 X2 3800+
OCZ Platinum 2GB (2 x 1GB) 184-Pin DDR SDRAM DDR 400 (PC 3200) Dual Channel
GIGABYTE GV-RX80L256V Radeon X800XL 256MB GDDR3 PCI Express x16 Video Card - OEM

EDIT: See post below for issue with scandisk

 

[mjrpes3]

As for evil viruses, I use Firefox, don't use any P2P, don't download attachments, and was browsing safe websites as usual when it happened.

 

[mjrpes3]

*BUMP*

I'm just going ahead and getting a new MB from newegg... hopefully it's that and not the CPU.

 

[KGB]

Have you tried clearing the CMOS per the MB manual?

 

[mjrpes3]

yes, sorry for not mentioning it.

 

[mjrpes3]

Okay, I got the new motherboard, and so far it seems to have done the trick.

However, I think I unwittingly corrupted my harddrive. See, in the meantime, I had set up an older computer to act as a temporary computer. This computer had only a CD-ROM, so the best I could do was install the original version of XP, with no service packs. After I install it, I bring over my harddrive from the other computer. While booting up, I leave the room. When I come back, Windows is doing a chkdsk on it, and has found what seems like a million 'orphaned' files and is attempting to fix them. Knowing it's too late to stop the process, I let it run through. When Windows loads, all the files are present on my other drive, but half if not more of the files seem corrupted. I go into a directory of photos and 2/3 or the photos won't open and photo viewer says it cannot draw them, while the rest are OK. Most of my mp3 files don't work either, even though they're all seemingly there.

I know that XP couldn't support drives bigger than 137GB until SP1, and the drive I have is 200GB. My fear is that chkdsk got confused because of this. Today when I got my new motherboard, I reformatted my 'corrupted' harddrive and everything seems OK with it.

Is anyone aware of corruption issues with the pre-SP1 version of the chkdsk, when it is confronted with a harddrive bigger than 137GB?

EDIT: some big typos and scandisk != chkdsk

 

[corkyg]

XP does not use or have Scandisk. That went out with 98. XP uses Chkdsk, and always from the command prompt.

 

[Xsorovan]

He obviously means "Chkdsk" (corkyg) because that is what windows runs when it detects an error in the drive.

While I have never heard of a problem like this it is possible for CHKDSK to get a little zealous at times. I've never had any issue with it corrupting data though. Generally if it finds bad data and it isn't disturbed that data is fine. I wonder if the motherboard went out and the HD was spinning it was corrupting data with just enough power to spin and move the head a bit. (wild guess there)

However this DOES make me want to try CHKDSK from pre sp1 on a 200gb HD full of data and see what happens. (I'd put my money on the bad mobo over the bad CHKDSK though)

 

[mjrpes3]

Yeah, I meant Chkdsk... was just going off from memory and really didn't have to urge to run the program again.

As for whether it's the motherboard or not, I'm not fully convinced it's chkdsk either. The thing going for it is (a) the random nature of the corruption, where some files worked and others didn't, (b) the fact that chkdsk said it did its job when it actually didn't, (c) the given circumstance that I was using a drive supposedly larger than what the program was able to support at the time, and (d) it seems weird for the motherboard to have done such a funky and intricate mess within the split second it took for the computer to 'crash'.

Then again this technology is always ten steps ahead of my knowledge, so truly I don't know.

 

[mjrpes3]

Xsorovan, I subscribed to this topic, so if you or anyone else does a test, maybe 10 months down the line, post here. I'd do one myself but don't have a spare 137GB+ HDD at this time. I appreciate the feedback. :thumbsup:

 

[Xsorovan]

All you really need to do is damage the file table and you'll have all sorts of problems. It'll take an instant to damage that. So that could have been it when the mobo fritzed out.

 

[mjrpes3]

OK, I did some more sleuthing on the interwebs... getting much more interesting results, now that I know it's chkdsk, not scandisk. Anyway, found this thread,

http://www.softwaretipsandtricks.com/fo...upt-under-xp-sp2-security-changes.html

One of the people in the thread seems to have been in the same state as me:

Had the same problem with two 200GB harddisks, with a c: partition and several other partitions, all full of data, most of it is lost now.

Think this is the cause:

http://support.microsoft.com/?id=303013

Somewhere half way through the page there is this warning:

Warning Data corruption may occur if either of the following conditions is true:
? You use this registry value to enable 48-bit LBA support in the original release version of Windows XP Home Edition or of Windows XP Professional.
? You install an earlier version of Windows on a disk partition that was previously created by a 48-bit aware operating system, such as Windows XP SP1. And that disk partition is equal to or larger than the current addressable limit of 137 GB.

After a motherboard replacement I had to reinstall XP. I did this with a clean XP without integrated service packs (note there are easy tools to create WINXP CDs with integrated SP2, look for autopatcher from neowin, and pebuilder).
By now it was too late as files were corrupted.
Installation of SP 2 did not help, other then XP trying to fix corrupt and orphaned files.
The data I had on the harddisks is corrupted to an extent I can't determine. Basically I'm considering this a full loss.

Then I found this page, which seems a goldmine on chkdsk issues:

http://www.techspot.com/vb/all/windows/t-4824-freaky-chkdsk.html

One person's ordeal:

I've been having a lot of blue screens recently and a lot of chkdsks being run on boot but they were usually only finding a couple of small issues. Just put in a new mother board and CPU (AMD Athlon 3.2 to a P4 3.2, ASUS board), reinstalled Windows XP Pro (no SP), was about to install another driver when the PC blue screened. On reboot it started off with the orphaned file BS and effectively removed 50Gb or so of data off my drive as well as corrupting god knows how much. I'm not happy.
The drive is a Seagate 200gb, one 15Gb FAT32 boot partition and the rest (170Gb) in a NTFS partition. Board was an ASUS A7N8X-E with Athlon 3.2, now a P4P800-E with Pentium 4 3.2, so the board and CPU are ruled out for hardware problems.

Then I found this site:

http://www.48bitlba.com/faq.htm#FAQ2

which seems to be a good resource on the 137GB limit. Here is a nice item in their FAQ that I wish I had know about:

8. I have a 48-bit LBA hard drive installed on my system and I would like to move it and install it on another system so I can access the data on the hard drive using the new system. Is there anything I should be concerned about or pay attention to?

Careful here! Whenever moving a 48-bit LBA hard drive to a new system it is absolutely critical to make sure the new system is fully 48-bit LBA compliant. If it is not, it is highly likely the data on the hard drive will become corrupted and forever gone. We have received reports from some users where exactly that has happened. Unfortunately, helping recover the data is beyond the help we can provide here. If you value the data on your hard drive, our suggestion is to follow steps to safeguard your data first before moving the hard drive. That means backup your critical data to alternate storage using a backup application or copy your critical data to another hard drive. Then make sure the new system is fully 48-bit LBA compliant before you move the 48-bit LBA hard drive. Also, it's best to try and use the same version of Windows between the old and new systems or at least do not use an earlier version of Windows on the new system. For example, you could get into trouble if you are using your 48-bit LBA hard drive with Windows XP and you would like to move it to another system which is running Windows 98 SE.

Moral of the story: DON'T put a drive with a partition >137GB into a computer that does not support the higher (48bit) limit.

 

[Xsorovan]

Nice! Thanks for the links! There is some good material in there. And I think we can all say we learned something. (fade to black and roll credits)