HUGE Problem

Monkey177

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Feb 25, 2001
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Ok I've went through this twice now. I formatted my HD and then partitioned it. I installed Windows 2000 on one side and it booted up and everything went fine. I then reinstsalled all my applications and stuff and reboot probably like 10 times after everything and its fine. When I turn it off and leave it overnight, the next morning it says the registry is corrupted! Says something about file under system32/config/.... is corrupted. It then refuses to go into windows...I then had to reformat the HD and reinstall everything. This morning it happened again! What's going on??

Thanks,
Simon
 

Monkey177

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Feb 25, 2001
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I went through the setup repair stuff and tried to let set up fix it but didn't work. Would it be more of a HD problem than RAM? Anyone else experience this problem before?
 

Monkey177

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Feb 25, 2001
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Would the partitioning have anything to do with it. I partitioned at the beginning of windows setup. Then after it got fully installed I just went into windows to format the other half.

OK I'm in windows setup repair and ran a chkdsk. It shows that C: has an error in it but doesn't say what it is and whether I want to fix it. D: is ok.
 

RickH

Senior member
Aug 5, 2000
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Test the memory with this program. It loads from the A drive, and runs from a "DOS" prompt. Depending on the amount of memory it can take hours, but it writes and reads every address on the chip. I have found bad memory to caused regestry problems. R.

http://www.aha.ru/~alegr/download/memtest_en.htm[/L]
 

Monkey177

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Feb 25, 2001
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I don't understand though. Why does leaving it off for a few hours cause the problem?? Doesn't happen if I leave it off for 5 mins and turn it back on...
 

RickH

Senior member
Aug 5, 2000
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Does the motherboard remember its BIOS settings?? Is the time correct, drive information, etc. How old is the board?? How far does it get into the boot up??? Mysterious. R.
 

Monkey177

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Feb 25, 2001
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Brand new board. It gets past BIOS and starts loading windows. It happens a little bit after starting windows. Well now that the OS can't start on C:...I installed it on the second partition D: drive. I didn't install anything else but windows. Now i'm going to let it set for a few hours and see if it gets corrupted again. Just rebooting it won't tell. THe last two times happened when I left the computer off overnight
 

SemperFi

Platinum Member
Apr 5, 2000
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How old is the hard drive? Download the diagnostics for your brand of drive and use to test the drive.

Possibly heat related.?

I would run the diagnostic test when the system is cold and again after it has been running for an hour or so.
 

Monkey177

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Feb 25, 2001
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The drive is brand new also. Good idea though I should get the HD tested out. HOpefully I can find the diagnostics tools for it. Thanks.
 

SemperFi

Platinum Member
Apr 5, 2000
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If you can't find you should be able to download them. I bought a western Digital about a year ago for a friends computer and it lasted about a week. Checked their site and found that it was on their recall list. Things happen;):)
 

rbV5

Lifer
Dec 10, 2000
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Its not the time you have it off, your registry is scattered as soon as its shut off, you just don't notice it until you turn it on. Your problem is your hardrive cache isn't finished writing back to the system before the OS shuts down...bam, scrambled registry.

Your OS shuts down differently if you pick "shut down" rather than "restart" if you "restart", you never scramble the registry, right.

There is a hotpatch somewhere, and SP2 is supposed to have the fix.

Until then, I would just pick "restart" and turn the computer off before it POST's. It worked for me.
 

Nih

Senior member
Sep 3, 2000
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Is acpi enabled in the bios during installation? make sure it is!!!
 

loosbrew

Golden Member
Oct 30, 2000
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its defintely the same issue that win98 has while shutting down too fast. happened to me allll the time, until i read that it also happened in win2k. i was always under the impression that win2k didnt suffer from this problem but it dopes and so i used the hotfix and havent had aproblem since. that might be because i dont shut down anymore ;)

loosbrew
 

PAT31850

Member
Oct 14, 1999
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RBV5 has the right answer. Just read an article about this the other day. The new processors are so fast that the hard drives cant keep up especially at shut down. As far as the processor is concerned its time to turn off but the drive hasn't finished writing. They were talking about a fix but i didnt make a note. If I find it I will post it. The idea about reboot and turnoff sounds alike a good temp fix.
 

Monkey177

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Feb 25, 2001
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Ok sounds like you guys also have a good idea but I think it may really be the HD. I ran Western Digital's online diagnostic tools and it found problems. It took 5 hours to fix it and when I ran it again, it showed problems again. Well I got an RMA from them so I should get the new one in a few days. Thanks for the help guys.
 

Petro89

Golden Member
Jul 4, 2000
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Yeah, I had similar problems with an old Maxtor 8.4 gig drive. Everything was great unless I had it off for a while. Upon bootup, I'd get Scandisk and Windows Registry checker. I was ready to break out my sledge hammer. Turns out I had the hard drive parameters set incorrectly in the BIOS. :(
 

Nih

Senior member
Sep 3, 2000
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regedit
hkey local machine/software/microsoft/windows/current version
create new Dword value; CacheWriteDelay, set for Decimal value of 2000
This creates a 2000 ms delay before shutdown, so hdds with large cache can fully flush before shutting down.
uhuh, thankya very much
 

Monkey177

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Feb 25, 2001
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Nih : Can you give me a bit more detail on how to do that. I might give it a try before the new HD gets here. But the thing I don't understand is....why is it that it gets more screwed the longer I leave it off? If I leave it off for 5 mins nothing happens but for 5 hours, windows wont boot....
 

rbV5

Lifer
Dec 10, 2000
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Have you tried what I suggested, instead of shutting down the computer using "Shut down" try using "Restart" and then right before your machine POST's, just shut it down with the power button.

While I guess its possible that having your hardrive sit for awile(I'm not sure how though) is corrupting your data, thats not likely. Nih's registry fix is closer to whats up, I mean you don't realy know that the time has anything to do with it, try what I showed you and THEN leave your computer off. I'll bet it boots right up.

The errors may have just been bad clusters or something from shutting down like that and a symtom of the problem rather than the cause.

Make sure you have your ERD handy with a recent copy of your registry. Remember even your new drive will do the same thing, if its the shut down problem.
 

Monkey177

Member
Feb 25, 2001
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Ok guys...I tried rbv5's method and it seems to work. I restarted and then powered it off. I waited four hours and it worked fine. Now...how do I fix this problem permanently so I don't always have to go through this method? I'm going to leave it off all nite tonite...hopefully it works again...it should. Thanks rbv5 for the great tip!
 

Monkey177

Member
Feb 25, 2001
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Ok I left it off overnite and it still works! I was reading Nih's fix but I'm not too familiar on how to do that. Can you guys give a little bit more details?

Thanks