Windows Update Killing Hard Drives??? Please Help!!!

[Guest]

I have a Windows XP Home PC that has the symptoms of a hard drive crash after
installing Windows updates. This is the second time in about 4 months this
has occured. The first time I wrote it off to the age of the hard drive
because the PC is about 6 years old and the drive that failed was the drive
that came in the PC. This time I am almost positive that it is related to
the update.

I did not run any updates on this computer after purchasing and installing a
new hard drive for a little over 5 months just in case it was related to the
update. Then after it ran fine for all this time I forgot about my problem
and when the update reminder came up I downloaded the updates and proceeded
with the install.

After restarting as recommended the PC comes up to an abort/retry/fail
screen, as it did the first time this happened, where the PC appears is
trying to boot off the floppy drive with no disk. On a subsequent restart it
did come up to a Windows XP screen that just said "Welcome" but froze there.
It hasn't gotten there again since that time.

When I boot with a Windows XP boot disk and try to see either of the 2 hard
drives on the system it's like neither of them are there. The XP boot disk
reports that "drive C: doesn't have a valid fat partition". It's almost like
there is a hard drive controller failure. The CD/DVD drives on the secondary
controller are still working.

When I removed the drive and put it in another PC the last time this
happened the drive was dead. I suspect the same will be true of this one but
I hesitate to put this drive in my primary PC in case there is a virus.
Before I proceeded I thought I might ask some of you kind folks if you have
any suggestions. It just seems like too much of a coincedence that both
times right after this update the primary HDD failed. By the way, I have not
used this machine on the internet except to register it when I installed XP
on the new drive and when downloading these "killer" updates, so I am pretty
sure it was virus free before downloading the updates. Also, I searched for
anything relevant on the web but haven't located anything specific to updates
killing hard drives yet.

Thanks in advance for any help you can offer!

Doug

Dell Dimension 4100 P3
1 GHz 133 Bus
1 Gig Ram
Primary HDD Maxtor Diamond Max 80 Gb 7200 RPM Purchased 5/13/06
Secondary HDD Maxtor 160 Gb

Other system details available upon request

 

[Gerry Cornell]

Doug

How large is the drive and how much free space? Is it formatted as FAT32
or NTFS?

I would try HD Tune (freeware).
Download and run it and see what it turns up.
http://www.hdtune.com/

Select the Info tabs and place the cursor on the drive under Drive letter
and then double click the two page icon ( copy to
Clipboard ) and copy into a further message.

Select the Health tab and then double click the two page icon ( copy to
Clipboard ) and copy into a further message.

Also do a full surface scan with HD Tune.


--

Hope this helps.

Gerry
~~~~
FCA
Stourport, England

Enquire, plan and execute
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

 

[Guest]

It is 80 Gb formatted NTFS. I cannot read the drive so I am unsure as to the
exact amount of free space, but it should have very little space used. The
only things that are on it are XP and a few programs - Easy CD Creator, ATI
Catalyst Video Card Software for the ATI video card with TV out, McAfee Anti
Virus, and DVD XCopy. It is used as a multimedia machine in my A/V closet
hooked up to a Plasma TV and is used primarily for recording and burning
video. I haven't recorded anything on it since installing the new drive and
always store the recorded files onto the secondary drive. Both drives are
setup with limits so that there should never be less than 5% free space.
Occasionally it is used for internet access and used for a slide show on the
Plasma usually at Christmas.

Thanks for your response,

Doug

 

[Guest]

I don't think I can use HD Tune at this time because the machine will not
boot into the XP operating system and it appears that HD Tune requires a
working operating system to check the drive.

Doug

 

[Guest]

Followup from original poster -

This hard drive indeed failed. I have sent it to Maxtor for warranty
replacement.