Corrupted hard drive

[Guest]

I've been up for the last 3 nights trying to find out what is wrong with my
system. I have a Asus P4T-E motherboard with a Western Digital 80 gig hd
with 8meg buffer for the boot drive and 512 megs of PC800 rambus memory. I'm
was running a Dual boot configuration with Window 98se installed on the
first partition and Window XP Home edition installled on the second
partition. It started after I uninstalled a trial version of Norton
Anti-viurs 2003 professional then my computer gliched so I hit the reset
button to reboot but I could not get back into Windows XP so I decided to
reinstall windows xp from the installation disk from the CD-ROM by booting
from the cd-rom but everytime I tried to install windows xp it told me that
it could'nt format the partition that I was going to install the OS into,
then It told me that my hard drive was corrupted so I decided to just wipe
everything off the hard drive and start from scratch so I repartitioned the
whole drive and formated with a FAT 32 partition and reinstalled windows
98se with no problems then I installed Partition Magic 7.0 to create the
second partition to install windows xp. When I tried to install windows xp
on the newly created second partition I ran into the same problem. I don't
understand why I'm able to install windows 98se with no problems but I
cannot get windows xp to install at all. I then tried to install windows xp
by itself on just one primary partition but still ran into the same problem.
I thought the the hard drive might be defective or corrupted so I took to my
local PC Club to see what they could do. One of the repair technicians
hooked it up to one of their test rigs to see if he could install windows xp
and he was able to get the it installed on his machine but when I got the
drive home to finish the installation I ran into the same problem so I
thought of using a different drive to see if my WD 80 gig drive is defective
or corrupted so i hooked up a old 6 gig hard drive that I had'nt used in a
while but I knew still worked and when I hooked it up to my motherboard's
IDE controller primary position and tried to install windows xp the same
thing happened. it kept telling me that my drive is damaged or corrrupted. I
don't get it at all. What in my computer could be preventing me from
installing windows xp.? I don't think it's the hard drive because the
people at PC Club were able to get windows xp installed and I ran into the
same snag trying to installl windows xp on the 6 gig hard drive, 2 different
drives and the same problems so I don't know what to do now. Could it by
something on the motherboard?.. If anybody has a solution for this problem
Please let me know.

Thanks

 

[Chris Hill]

I've been up for the last 3 nights trying to find out what is wrong with my
system. I have a Asus P4T-E motherboard with a Western Digital 80 gig hd
with 8meg buffer for the boot drive and 512 megs of PC800 rambus memory. I'm
was running a Dual boot configuration with Window 98se installed on the
first partition and Window XP Home edition installled on the second
partition. It started after I uninstalled a trial version of Norton
Anti-viurs 2003 professional then my computer gliched so I hit the reset
button to reboot but I could not get back into Windows XP so I decided to
reinstall windows xp from the installation disk from the CD-ROM by booting
from the cd-rom but everytime I tried to install windows xp it told me that
it could'nt format the partition that I was going to install the OS into,
then It told me that my hard drive was corrupted so I decided to just wipe
everything off the hard drive and start from scratch so I repartitioned the
whole drive and formated with a FAT 32 partition and reinstalled windows
98se with no problems then I installed Partition Magic 7.0 to create the
second partition to install windows xp. When I tried to install windows xp
on the newly created second partition I ran into the same problem. I don't
understand why I'm able to install windows 98se with no problems but I
cannot get windows xp to install at all. I then tried to install windows xp
by itself on just one primary partition but still ran into the same problem.
I thought the the hard drive might be defective or corrupted so I took to my
local PC Club to see what they could do. One of the repair technicians
hooked it up to one of their test rigs to see if he could install windows xp
and he was able to get the it installed on his machine but when I got the
drive home to finish the installation I ran into the same problem so I
thought of using a different drive to see if my WD 80 gig drive is defective
or corrupted so i hooked up a old 6 gig hard drive that I had'nt used in a
while but I knew still worked and when I hooked it up to my motherboard's
IDE controller primary position and tried to install windows xp the same
thing happened. it kept telling me that my drive is damaged or corrrupted. I
don't get it at all. What in my computer could be preventing me from
installing windows xp.? I don't think it's the hard drive because the
people at PC Club were able to get windows xp installed and I ran into the
same snag trying to installl windows xp on the 6 gig hard drive, 2 different
drives and the same problems so I don't know what to do now. Could it by
something on the motherboard?.. If anybody has a solution for this problem
Please let me know.

Could be. Sounds like you need to test the rest of the system. I'd
suspect ram, but mainboard and power supply can also cause weird
behavior.

 

[Rod Speed]

I've been up for the last 3 nights trying to find out what is wrong with my
system. I have a Asus P4T-E motherboard with a Western Digital 80 gig
hd with 8meg buffer for the boot drive and 512 megs of PC800 rambus
memory. I'm was running a Dual boot configuration with Window 98se
installed on the first partition and Window XP Home edition installled on
the second partition. It started after I uninstalled a trial version of Norton
Anti-viurs 2003 professional then my computer gliched so I hit the reset
button to reboot but I could not get back into Windows XP so I decided to
reinstall windows xp from the installation disk from the CD-ROM by booting
from the cd-rom but everytime I tried to install windows xp it told me that
it could'nt format the partition that I was going to install the OS into,
then It told me that my hard drive was corrupted so I decided to just wipe
everything off the hard drive and start from scratch so I repartitioned the
whole drive and formated with a FAT 32 partition and reinstalled windows
98se with no problems then I installed Partition Magic 7.0 to create the
second partition to install windows xp. When I tried to install windows xp
on the newly created second partition I ran into the same problem. I don't
understand why I'm able to install windows 98se with no problems but I
cannot get windows xp to install at all.

XP can be quite a bit more fussy about the hardware than SE.

I then tried to install windows xp
by itself on just one primary partition but still ran into the same problem.

Which basically means that there is some
hardware problem thats causing the install to fail.

I thought the the hard drive might be defective or corrupted so I took to
my local PC Club to see what they could do. One of the repair technicians
hooked it up to one of their test rigs to see if he could install windows xp
and he was able to get the it installed on his machine but when I got the
drive home to finish the installation I ran into the same problem so I
thought of using a different drive to see if my WD 80 gig drive is defective
or corrupted so i hooked up a old 6 gig hard drive that I had'nt used in a
while but I knew still worked and when I hooked it up to my motherboard's
IDE controller primary position and tried to install windows xp the same
thing happened. it kept telling me that my drive is damaged or corrrupted.

Looks like something is causing it to decide that, when
its not correct in the sense that the hard drive is faulty.

I don't get it at all. What in my computer could
be preventing me from installing windows xp.?

Basically something about the hardware that sees
it decide that the hard drive contents are corrupted.

I don't think it's the hard drive because the people at PC
Club were able to get windows xp installed and I ran into
the same snag trying to installl windows xp on the 6 gig
hard drive, 2 different drives and the same problems
Correct.

so I don't know what to do now. Could
it by something on the motherboard?..

Yes, it could certainly be something like that,
and that could have produced the original
problem with the uninstall of Norton's AV too.

If anybody has a solution for this problem Please let me know.

Unfortunately there isnt any easy way to resolve a problem like this.

An OS install does work the system quite a bit harder
than a normal desktop system is ever worked otherwise,
so it can show up subtle hardware problems that you
dont see a lot of evidence of in normal work.

I'd strip the system back to the absolute minimum hardware
and see if you can install XP on that. If you can, add the extra
hardware back in chunks and REPEAT the clean reinstall to
see what bit of the extra hardware is causing the install to fail.

If you still cant do an XP install on the minimum of hardware,
try another video card if you can. If it still wont install XP, reset
the motherboard cmos settings to the default and try again.

If it still wont install XP, likely you've developed a subtle fault.
It would be worth flashing the bios with the latest version in
case thats something Asus has fixed in the mean time.

 

[omega man]

Could be the ribbon cable has become damaged...try another cable
first....other than that then it becomes a wide open case of trying to track
down the problem