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WinXP Pro and Hive Problems

rw120555

Golden Member
My computer has developed this annoying habit of running for a day or two, and then, on reboot, giving me a very quick blue screen which says something about problems with the Hive file. Luckily, I have a Norton Ghost backup from about a month ago, and all my data files are kept on other drives, so I am able to get back running fairly quickly. But, I don't want to have to do this every couple days!

Based on various things I've read, it sounds like this could be a hardware problem -- the hd, the ide controller, the memory. Is there any particular strategy for pinning this down? Should I just run the diagnostics tests that came with the computer (Dell Optiplex) or is there a better way? (I'm running those tests right now, and so far no problems.)

Also, I'm thinking the problem is not software -- it ran for a month with the ghosted system I am restoring that now only runs for a day or two -- but I am updating the Norton systemworks files and running windows update each time, in case some problem has developed with them in the past month. (Hence I'm not sure if I am even in the right forum, but I don't recall ever seeing a problem like this back when I had Win98).

Thanks for any ideas. RW
 
Could be a bad sector on your hard drive. At some point Windows moves a file onto there and it goes corrupt. Have you ran a Scandisk/CHKDSK on the drive yet?
 
I ran the quick tests diagnostics that came with the dell and now, for good measure, I am running the extended diagnostics. I can see a bad sector causing the problem once, but it seems odd it would cause it multiple times -- like, the hive file just keeps getting placed in the bad spot all the time? But maybe it does. I'm worried that it may be some sort of intermittent problem that will be a nightmare to track down. Heck, maybe it is even a bad ide cable. I may try unplugging and replugging a bunch of stuff to see if that helps, but it would be nice if some diagnostic test would pinpoint the problem. Thanks much for the input!
 
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