Critical WindowsXP Failure

[WhiteKnight]

I installed a few updates from the windows site yesterday on my XP rig and after rebooting, my PC froze about 20s after login. My system is usually pretty stable so this was strange. I rebooted, same problem. Tried using windows recovery and went back to before I installed the update. That didn't work. I used safe mode and msconfig to disable all services and startup programs and rebooted. The system seemed fine and I gradually started reenabling the services and programs. After a while I thought I had the problem narrowed down to Norton Utilities or ZoneAlarm, so I uninstalled those and rebooted. From this point things got much worse. I started getting drive errors during windows startup and even when I let chkdsk run they would just come up again the next time. I let it sit overnight and came back to it this afternoon. Now apparently one of my RAID-5 drives has failed and while the array is still functional, I can't even get windows to load after login before it freezes. I'm about out of ideas at this point, any help?

 

[WhiteKnight]

update: Now one of the drives has dropped out of the array and the array is offline, indicating some sort of problem in the remaining two. I didn't do anything to alter the harddrives.

 

[EeyoreX]

Coincidence? Problem with the RAID controller? Power surge killed your hard drive(s). Personally, I'd start by troubleshooting your hardware, as this is probably not a Windows problem.

\Dan

 

[WhiteKnight]

The strangeness continues...

After the array went down I took all of the drives off the controller and put them on normal IDE channels so I could run some diognostic utils on them. They all checked out ok. I was able to recreate the array and retain all of the data, but I still can't boot into windows, as chkdsk seems to hang.

 

[dunkster]

You have Norton Utilities.

Even uninstalled, I believe you can launch NU (DiskDoctor) by booting from the CD. If DiskDoctor can fix the problem, chkdsk can complete it's scan and you should be able to boot Windows.

Whether HD controller or HD physical devices, it sure looks like it's HD-related. I would safeguard all critical data before I did anything else.

Sorry I can't offer more.

 

[WhiteKnight]

Now when I try to start XP it says that system32\drivers\ntfs.sys is missing or corrupt. I can't get XP setup to read my raid array either. How can I boot to a prompt that has access to the array? If I could do that I could just copy the file over directly from the cd.

 

[WhiteKnight]

Overnight I installed the RAID card in another PC and managed to get to the recovery console ok. I CHKDSK'd all of the affected drives, and was able to boot into XP on the second machine. After reinstalling the card on the original machine, however, I can't even get to the WinXP startup screen. It just goes to a blank screen right before that, though there is definitely a signal since my monitor doesn't go into standby. What is up here? Did my mobo kick it or something?

 

[WhiteKnight]

anyone?

 

[EeyoreX]

Try checking your RAM, see if it is a problem. Try one stick at a time (if you have more than one) and see if you can boot properly. Also try memtest86 to see if your RAM comes up with errors. Your motherboard might be shot, but I'd check your RAM first. Then your PSU from the other system, see if that fixes your problem. If your PSU is not supplying enough power for everything, that could cause trouble. There deffinately seems to be some hardware in the one machine that is keeping you from running things properly, since the array/card works okay in another machine. Again, start with the RAM and PSU. Good luck. Let us know more when you solve the problem!

\Dan

 

[WhiteKnight]

Thanks for the advice, I'll try it out and let you know how it goes. Something odd happened earlier today... I resurrected my old boot array that I had running on the mobo's onboard raid controller (new array is pci controller), and I was able to boot ok with that. It's weird, since now it seems like the problem is getting my raid card to work with my system, which it always had before. I guess it's just difficult to understand since nothing obvious changed that would have disrupted the system.

 

[WhiteKnight]

I think I've made some progress. I got the second machine to crash with the raid card installed, indicating that it's a problem with either one of the HDs or the raid card itself. I ran WD's proprietary disk analysis utility and all three checked out. I also ran chkdsk on the partitions and they checked out too, though I'm still getting automated chkdsk when I try to boot as well. I guess that means it's the raid card, unless the drive utils can't be trusted...

 

[DurocShark]

RAID, HD's, RAM, MoBo, CPU, in that order... But you said you got it to crash in another machine, so I'm thinking it's the card.

Grab a HD and run it off the onboard IDE controller and see what happens (not one of your raid'd drives tho).