Hard Drive dead? Update! 8/25

[rky60]

Tryin' to install XP, after it copies all the files then it either hangs at "Setup is starting Windows" or causes a page fault.

Ran a bootable disc of memtest98 for an hour or so, all was good.

XP was installed on the system, but it hung at windows with all sorts of errors, bridge.dll and such. Tried a few things like safe mode and LKGC but always got the page fault. So I used floppies of partition magic to format the drive, and now I can't install anything.

Hard drive? Any tools out there I can run on the drive to test it out?

Thanks

 

[MTDEW]

Hard drive? Any tools out there I can run on the drive to test it out?

Yep, get the diagnostic tools from the manufacturers website.

Western Digital Data Lifeguard and diagnostic utilities are HERE.

Maxtor PowerMax and Maxblast utilities are HERE

Seagate diagnostic tools are HERE.

If the drive isnt one of these , just go to the Manufacturers website and look under the support section.

 

[Fencer128]

Hi,

Sounds to me like one of the following:

1. Bad IDE cable (change and check)
2. Bad on-board IDE controller or southbridge (try PCI controller card or other motherboard)
3. UDMA not working properly ( try IO mode 4 - urghh - usually a problem with older drives)

Good luck,

Andy

 

[rky60]

Thx, I figured the drive in this thing would be so generic or old that there wouldn't be much support for vendor specific tools, I was wrong

Anyhow, it ended up bein' a Samsung (model SV4002H) and they have some utulities like this one

Appears the drive has problems, pic!

It failed the random surface scan, doin' a full scan now. New drive possibly, oh well, not mine

Thx again

 

[Fencer128]

Hi,

I hope that's narrowed down the problem - something to check just in case though is still to swap the IDE cable - since a drive diagnostic program is going to have a hard time distinguishing between a dodgy drive and a dodgy cable connecting a good drive. Probably not the case but might save you the cost of a new drive if it is.

Good luck,

Andy

 

[rky60]

Thx Fence, good tip. And I got a few new cables I could try

Thx again

 

[rky60]

I'm back!

Before I RMA'ed the hard drive I tried a new IDE cable and a few other things, barebones startup, still no love. Just got the hard drive back from Samsung, and..

Same error, hangs at "Setup is starting Windows" after it copies all the files or causes a page fault or IRQ Not Less or equal"

Once again, bare minimum startup (HDD, CD-ROM, Floppy, has Onboard video/sound, I disabled the sound and other onboard items) Also swapped out the RAM and tried all banks individually

I'm guessin i'm left with only one solution, get another motherboard?

 

[rky60]

Ran the Samsung utilty on the new HDD I got back from Samsung, no problems. Ran memtest for a few hours, no problems.

Flashed BIOS on the mobo to the latest, it's a ECS K7SEM

Any other reasons why Windows won't install?

 

[MrChad]

Try disconnecting and reconnecting the IDE cables for both the CD-ROM and the hard drive. Also, try using a different XP CD if you have one available. Failing that, I would say you have a motherboard problem.

EDIT: Try running memtest overnight. Sometimes a few hours isn't long enough to catch problems.

 

[HdwGuy]

Even though mem test passed If you have more that one dimm I would revome them one at a time to see if you can get XP to install. Every time I have had a problem with installing Windows OS it has ALLWAYS been memory at fault. You could check and see that the memory clock settings are at default for your memorys speed on the MB.