Win2K Spontaneous Reboot - Corrupted Drive

[Jim]

Hi

Strange occurrence. The computer has had Win2K on it for a couple of
years now, no serious problems. It's updated/patched regularly.
Tonight, the screen saver is active, so I hit a key to get back to the
desktop. Bam! Spontaneous reboot. While rebooting, after the POST
messages, there's a very long delay where nothing happens (black
screen). This lasts about 20 seconds. Then, I get an error:

Disk I/O error: Status = 00001000

Then another error:

Invalid boot.ini file
Booting from c:\winnt

Then I get the Win2K boot screen. When the status bar is almost filled,
I get a BSOD with the following error:

STOP: 0x000007B INACCESSIBLE_BOOT_DEVICE

That's it, system is unusable (I tried booting into Safe Mode, same
sequence of errors). The really strange thing, this exact same thing
happened to my other computer 2 weeks ago (different hardware, same OS).
I keep my virus definitions up-to-date and I have firewalls on all my
boxes. Anyone seen anything like this? On my other computer, I tried
booting from the Win2K CDROM, hitting Rescue mode and trying 'fixmbr',
but that didn't help. I rebuilt that box with XP (and a new HD), but I
don't want to have to do that with this box. It's very strange that two
machines exhibit the almost identical problem within weeks of each other.

Any suggestions, insights would be greatly appreciated. Thanks.

Jim

 

[Enkidu]

Strange occurrence. The computer has had Win2K on it for a couple of
years now, no serious problems. It's updated/patched regularly.
Tonight, the screen saver is active, so I hit a key to get back to the
desktop. Bam! Spontaneous reboot. While rebooting, after the POST
messages, there's a very long delay where nothing happens (black
screen). This lasts about 20 seconds. Then, I get an error:

Disk I/O error: Status = 00001000

Then another error:

Invalid boot.ini file
Booting from c:\winnt

Then I get the Win2K boot screen. When the status bar is almost filled,
I get a BSOD with the following error:

STOP: 0x000007B INACCESSIBLE_BOOT_DEVICE

That's it, system is unusable (I tried booting into Safe Mode, same
sequence of errors). The really strange thing, this exact same thing
happened to my other computer 2 weeks ago (different hardware, same OS).
I keep my virus definitions up-to-date and I have firewalls on all my
boxes. Anyone seen anything like this? On my other computer, I tried
booting from the Win2K CDROM, hitting Rescue mode and trying 'fixmbr',
but that didn't help. I rebuilt that box with XP (and a new HD), but I
don't want to have to do that with this box. It's very strange that two
machines exhibit the almost identical problem within weeks of each other.

Hi Jim, I think your hard disk has died. I've had that happen with a
number of machines after a power spike. Two of them, I think, failed
with dead PSUs immediately. Replacing the PSUs fixed those. One became
erratic and I eventually reinstalled the OS (2000). I don't remember
if it subsequently was OK. Two others had hard disk failures within a
week of each other. I think the spike caused it, but it could have
been coincidence.

We also bought some Fujitsu drives at one time:

http://hddclassactionsettlement.com/

Cheers,

Cliff

 

[Warren C. E. Austin]

Try replacing the ribbon cables connecting hard-disks to the controller. You should do this for all devices; if not possible, do so for the primary boot-device.

Power-spikes and other crashes can damage the cables, and Windows'2000 IS NOT fault-tolerant regarding power-leaks, especially from items such as your cabling. If possible boot the machine to MS-DOS and test the functionality of the hard-drive before replacing cables; if it all appears to be work as it should, then definitely replace the cables and try booting back into W2K.

Warren C. E. Austin
Toronto, Canada

 

[Cindi]

Did this by any chance, happen right after you had
downloaded the new service pack? Basically the same thing
is happening to me and that seemed to be the trigger.

 

[Ron at FOTC]

This is exactly what I am dealing with, ever since I
downloaded service pack 4 and rebooted the system I know
can only get the system up by hitting f8 during the reboot
and telling the system to use the "Last known good
configuration", any suggestions for how to fix this would
be greatly appreciated.

Ron