Two HDDs corrupt in 10 mins? HELP!

[Phillip]

Please help!

I've used computers for many years, but this has baffled me...

This afternoon I was using the smaller of my two laptops. It crashed in
the middle of a windows session so I had to hard restart it. Then
everytime it tried to boot, a BSOD came up quickly, disappeared before
I could read it, and the system restarts. Well... I tried this
several times, always the same.

I have big coursework deadlines looming in just a few days (always the
same isn't it - right before anything important!) so I took out the HDD
from this smaller laptop, and hooked it up externally to my big laptop.
I boot my big laptop and try to read the data on the smaller linked
HDD... It can't read the drive at all... can't even install it as a
storage device... then my big laptop hangs and I have to hard restart
that!

THen... when my big laptop starts up, same problem as with the small
laptop, it boots about 4 seconds of XP, BSOD, restart.
Continually...!! I couldn't believe it! So now thats my smaller laptop
and bigger laptop gone within the space of 10 minutes. I'm out of
resources! (Well now I've borrowed my dads laptop from his house to
write to you all on)

Right, I have one s**t load of data on my big laptop that I refuse to
use. Feels like my life's worth... just too much to lose. Since neither
HDD would boot any longer, I decided to get out my trusty Knoppix CD
(some version of Linux) and boot that off CD on my big laptop. Success
- and guess what - it reads ALL the content of my drive completely
fine. The big problem is, I can't back any of it up! I have a third,
spare hard drive, 40gb, but it's NTFS, so how can I reformat it to
FAT32 so I can use it as a backup device with knoppix? (also, maybe
theres an easier way to go about all this... since the drive obviously
works)

THought I'd try inserting the windows cd and seeing if it had a
repair-installation option... it crashed during initialisation, BSOD
and restart. So I'm really stuck... and I have a major deadine in a
few days

Also, does anyone think perhaps it was a boot-sector virus or something
that went from my small laptop's hdd to my big laptop hdd? I've never
had two hard drives crash in an identical manner so close in time to
each other before... But I'm reall stuck! (And idealy I don't want to
backup ALL my content, reinstall windows and set it ALL back up again.
I did this only a month ago, and I'm so specific with all the settings
and content, it takes so long. All the programs and plug-ins...

You're help would be grately appreciated. I'm thankful even just to
know that knoppix can read my files, so they must be obtainable in some
sense...

Thanks!

 

[David H. Lipman]

From: "Phillip" <[email protected]>

| Please help!
|
| I've used computers for many years, but this has baffled me...
|
| This afternoon I was using the smaller of my two laptops. It crashed in
| the middle of a windows session so I had to hard restart it. Then
| everytime it tried to boot, a BSOD came up quickly, disappeared before
| I could read it, and the system restarts. Well... I tried this
| several times, always the same.
|
| I have big coursework deadlines looming in just a few days (always the
| same isn't it - right before anything important!) so I took out the HDD
| from this smaller laptop, and hooked it up externally to my big laptop.
| I boot my big laptop and try to read the data on the smaller linked
| HDD... It can't read the drive at all... can't even install it as a
| storage device... then my big laptop hangs and I have to hard restart
| that!
|
| THen... when my big laptop starts up, same problem as with the small
| laptop, it boots about 4 seconds of XP, BSOD, restart.
| Continually...!! I couldn't believe it! So now thats my smaller laptop
| and bigger laptop gone within the space of 10 minutes. I'm out of
| resources! (Well now I've borrowed my dads laptop from his house to
| write to you all on)
|
| Right, I have one s**t load of data on my big laptop that I refuse to
| use. Feels like my life's worth... just too much to lose. Since neither
| HDD would boot any longer, I decided to get out my trusty Knoppix CD
| (some version of Linux) and boot that off CD on my big laptop. Success
| - and guess what - it reads ALL the content of my drive completely
| fine. The big problem is, I can't back any of it up! I have a third,
| spare hard drive, 40gb, but it's NTFS, so how can I reformat it to
| FAT32 so I can use it as a backup device with knoppix? (also, maybe
| theres an easier way to go about all this... since the drive obviously
| works)
|
| THought I'd try inserting the windows cd and seeing if it had a
| repair-installation option... it crashed during initialisation, BSOD
| and restart. So I'm really stuck... and I have a major deadine in a
| few days
|
| Also, does anyone think perhaps it was a boot-sector virus or something
| that went from my small laptop's hdd to my big laptop hdd? I've never
| had two hard drives crash in an identical manner so close in time to
| each other before... But I'm reall stuck! (And idealy I don't want to
| backup ALL my content, reinstall windows and set it ALL back up again.
| I did this only a month ago, and I'm so specific with all the settings
| and content, it takes so long. All the programs and plug-ins...
|
| You're help would be grately appreciated. I'm thankful even just to
| know that knoppix can read my files, so they must be obtainable in some
| sense...
|
| Thanks!

Check you power supply voltage with a DMM.
Should be with 10% tolerance and under load should have a very, very, low ripple.

 

[Ron Martell]

Please help!

I've used computers for many years, but this has baffled me...

This afternoon I was using the smaller of my two laptops. It crashed in
the middle of a windows session so I had to hard restart it. Then
everytime it tried to boot, a BSOD came up quickly, disappeared before
I could read it, and the system restarts. Well... I tried this
several times, always the same.

I have big coursework deadlines looming in just a few days (always the
same isn't it - right before anything important!) so I took out the HDD
from this smaller laptop, and hooked it up externally to my big laptop.
I boot my big laptop and try to read the data on the smaller linked
HDD... It can't read the drive at all... can't even install it as a
storage device... then my big laptop hangs and I have to hard restart
that!

THen... when my big laptop starts up, same problem as with the small
laptop, it boots about 4 seconds of XP, BSOD, restart.
Continually...!! I couldn't believe it! So now thats my smaller laptop
and bigger laptop gone within the space of 10 minutes. I'm out of
resources! (Well now I've borrowed my dads laptop from his house to
write to you all on)

Right, I have one s**t load of data on my big laptop that I refuse to
use. Feels like my life's worth... just too much to lose. Since neither
HDD would boot any longer, I decided to get out my trusty Knoppix CD
(some version of Linux) and boot that off CD on my big laptop. Success
- and guess what - it reads ALL the content of my drive completely
fine. The big problem is, I can't back any of it up! I have a third,
spare hard drive, 40gb, but it's NTFS, so how can I reformat it to
FAT32 so I can use it as a backup device with knoppix? (also, maybe
theres an easier way to go about all this... since the drive obviously
works)

THought I'd try inserting the windows cd and seeing if it had a
repair-installation option... it crashed during initialisation, BSOD
and restart. So I'm really stuck... and I have a major deadine in a
few days

Also, does anyone think perhaps it was a boot-sector virus or something
that went from my small laptop's hdd to my big laptop hdd? I've never
had two hard drives crash in an identical manner so close in time to
each other before... But I'm reall stuck! (And idealy I don't want to
backup ALL my content, reinstall windows and set it ALL back up again.
I did this only a month ago, and I'm so specific with all the settings
and content, it takes so long. All the programs and plug-ins...

You're help would be grately appreciated. I'm thankful even just to
know that knoppix can read my files, so they must be obtainable in some
sense...

Thanks!

Open Control Panel - System - Advanced and click on the Settings
button in the Startup and Recovery (bottom) section. In the Startup
and Recovery window click on the checkbox for "Automatically restart"
to clear it then click on Apply and OK as needed to exit.

Do this on both machines.

That should put an end to the automatic reboots and leave you with the
BSOD clearly displayed on the screen. Post the information from the
BSOD, including the STOP code, all 4 parameters, and any file or
module names mentioned back here.

Good luck

Ron Martell Duncan B.C. Canada
--
Microsoft MVP (1997 - 2006)
On-Line Help Computer Service
http://onlinehelp.bc.ca
Syberfix Remote Computer Repair

"Anyone who thinks that they are too small to make a difference
has never been in bed with a mosquito."

 

[Phillip]

Thanks Ron for the advice! In future I'll set that in my windows
machines.

The problem was that I couldn't even boot into windows, only about 4
seconds of the loading screen.

Well, late last night I fixed the problem. I inserted the windows cd,
went to the recovery console option (R) and ran chkdsk /r

-It took about 2 hours to complete, but now at least windows boots up
on my main laptop, with all my data

-Hope this helps anyone else who might have the same problem!