Something fishy with my C:/ partition

[lonelyt]

Hey everyone, a little help would be appreciated with this problem... I have one 80gb HD and two 40gb partitions, C and D. Winxp is on D, as are most of my files.

I have some files on C, but when a certain part of it (for lack of a better term) gets accessed, my computer reboots. What I mean is, if I'm theoretically copying over a 40GB file to C drive, somewhere along the way, the computer'll reboot. If i'm defragging C, it'll reboot at some point.

Is this a hardware failure? Or corrupted space maybe? thanks for any tips!

 

[YOyoYOhowsDAjello]

Originally posted by: lonelyt
Hey everyone, a little help would be appreciated with this problem... I have one 80gb HD and two 40gb partitions, C and D. Winxp is on D, as are most of my files.

I have some files on C, but when a certain part of it (for lack of a better term) gets accessed, my computer reboots. What I mean is, if I'm theoretically copying over a 40GB file to C drive, somewhere along the way, the computer'll reboot. If i'm defragging C, it'll reboot at some point.

Is this a hardware failure? Or corrupted space maybe? thanks for any tips!

I haven't had this happen to me, but that sound plausable. Maybe try reformatting the partition (slowly to check for errors)?

 

[JustAnAverageGuy]

Two ideas:

try running chkdsk. See what that turns up.

Also, This is pretty far off, but what power supply?

 

[stevty2889]

Could be some bad sectors on the drive theoreticly, so as someone else mentioned, run chkdsk to see if it turns up anything. You could also download the hard drive manufacturers utilities to check the drive. I would also run memtest, and be sure to list the brand of your power supply as well, not just the wattage, as generic PSU's tend to cause all kinds of problems.

 

[FlyingPenguin]

First thing I'd do is disable Windows's auto-reboot on error. That may allow you to see an error message instead of the computer rebooting. Right click My Computer->Properties->Advanced->Startup and Recovery "Settings" button->Uncheck "Automatically Restart".

Next time it happens hopefully you'll get an error that gives you some clue.

Also, check the Event Log and see if an error is generated in the log when it reboots.

Hope this helps...

 

[Ausm]

Originally posted by: stevty2889
Could be some bad sectors on the drive theoreticly, so as someone else mentioned, run chkdsk to see if it turns up anything. You could also download the hard drive manufacturers utilities to check the drive. I would also run memtest, and be sure to list the brand of your power supply as well, not just the wattage, as generic PSU's tend to cause all kinds of problems.

That is the same thing I am thinking.

Ausm

 

[dunkster]

I like the diagnostic programs offered by the maker of your HD for testing integrity of weak read/write blocks.

All seemed well with my WD HD - but images of my OS partition were failing byte-for-byte image verification test. WD's DLGDIAG diagnostic program found a weak read/write block that CHKDSK missed. It read the weak block data, wrote the data to a known-good block, and marked the weak block location to prevent re-use.

Utilites such as DLGDIAG are not a substitute for CHKDSK, because they only repair physical problems on the HD - but I think they do a better job in repairing physical magnetic read/write problems.

Hope this helps!

 

[lonelyt]

Thanks for responses everyone, but problem is still unsolved...

If I run CHKDSK on C:\, just like the original problem, when the bad "sector" is accessed, my computer simply restarts.

Power supply is a 320W Enermax, I think power isn't the problem since I recently upgraded vid card to a 6600gt AGP which requires more power, and I've had the HD problem before and after the card.

Thanks for any help!

 

[Sureshot324]

Like dunkster said get a diagnostic from a hard disk maker. These will boot from a floppy or cd so you shouldn't have the rebooting problem.