A paging error

[BrianF]

I have recently suffered from total WinXP lock-up where everthing freezes
and the only way to get out of it is to power down and restart the PC. I
have WinXP Pro on a 2.8GHz PC with 512MB Ram and two HDs (80GB master and
20GB slave).

Reboot is normal and Event Viewer identifies the problem as "Event ID 51. An
error was detected on device \Device\Harddisk1\D during a paging operation."
HD1 is a slave drive on which I do not have a paging file so I am puzzled by
this reference. I have run chkdsk and PowerMax on both the Master and the
Slave drives without any indication of problems. SiSoft Sandra also says the
drives are fine.

This lock-up mostly happens when I am away from the PC and the screen saver
is running although it has also happened in the middle of typing a document.

My only paging file is on C: where I have settings of Min. 750MB Max 1500MB
which I thing should be adequate for my type of use (MS-Office) although
this problem nearly always occurs when no programs are open.

Can anyone suggest what may be going wrong here?



Brianf

 

[GHalleck]

I have recently suffered from total WinXP lock-up where everthing freezes
and the only way to get out of it is to power down and restart the PC. I
have WinXP Pro on a 2.8GHz PC with 512MB Ram and two HDs (80GB master and
20GB slave).

Reboot is normal and Event Viewer identifies the problem as "Event ID 51. An
error was detected on device \Device\Harddisk1\D during a paging operation."
HD1 is a slave drive on which I do not have a paging file so I am puzzled by
this reference. I have run chkdsk and PowerMax on both the Master and the
Slave drives without any indication of problems. SiSoft Sandra also says the
drives are fine.

This lock-up mostly happens when I am away from the PC and the screen saver
is running although it has also happened in the middle of typing a document.

My only paging file is on C: where I have settings of Min. 750MB Max 1500MB
which I thing should be adequate for my type of use (MS-Office) although
this problem nearly always occurs when no programs are open.

Can anyone suggest what may be going wrong here?

In the engineering-speak of computer error messages, all this one is
saying is that there was a write error to the second hard drive. It is,
presumably, an older hard drive (at 20 GB). It might be worthwhile to
back up the 20 GB slave and do a high-level format to re-mark any bad
clusters that might have developed with age. However, since no programs
are knowingly active whilst this error can occur, one cannot discount
the existence of malware that may be also be present in the computer.
This would be another possibility to check. IOW, what is being written
to Drive D on Harddisk1?

 

[Guest]

Hello,
This "Device\Harddisk1\D" may indicate an optical drive, a cd or dvd.
I had this show once, there was no problem with the drive, my MB had a
problem.
I would clean the interior of the box, blow out the dust bunnies and check
the fans.
Run the desk cleanup utility in system tools.
A complete check for malware and virus infection.

I would include checking the memory as well as the harddrives.
Microsoft has a memory test download, free.
Harddrive manufacturers should have a test that can be downloaded, without
cost.

Some suggest letting Windows control the page file.
If system restore is active lowering the size may assist.
Windows Prefetch performs indexing in the background.
If you are using MS Office, it has a fast find which works in the background
indexing files.
The combination may cause a problem "if running at the same time" on some
units.
A guess on my part.

take care.
beamish.

 

[BrianF]

In the engineering-speak of computer error messages, all this one is
saying is that there was a write error to the second hard drive. It is,
presumably, an older hard drive (at 20 GB). It might be worthwhile to
back up the 20 GB slave and do a high-level format to re-mark any bad
clusters that might have developed with age. However, since no programs
are knowingly active whilst this error can occur, one cannot discount
the existence of malware that may be also be present in the computer.
This would be another possibility to check. IOW, what is being written
to Drive D on Harddisk1?

Thanks for the tip. I have just set up an external drive so will try using
that to back up and then format the 20GB drive.

brianf

 

[Rock]

Hello,
This "Device\Harddisk1\D" may indicate an optical drive, a cd or dvd.
I had this show once, there was no problem with the drive, my MB had a
problem.

Harddisk1 specifies what drive it is. It's Harddisk1. Look in disk manager
for which drive if uncertain.

 

[BrianF]

In the engineering-speak of computer error messages, all this one is
saying is that there was a write error to the second hard drive. It is,
presumably, an older hard drive (at 20 GB). It might be worthwhile to
back up the 20 GB slave and do a high-level format to re-mark any bad
clusters that might have developed with age. However, since no programs
are knowingly active whilst this error can occur, one cannot discount
the existence of malware that may be also be present in the computer.
This would be another possibility to check. IOW, what is being written
to Drive D on Harddisk1?

Well, I copied my data to the new external drive, formatted the slave drive
(HD1) and copied the data back onto that drive, saving about 15% of the
drive capacity in the process. So far, there has been no repeat of the
lock-up situation but I guess it needs a couple of days of constant use to
be sure.

brianf