Hard disk gets wiped if I run Win TV with Internet on

[Mark Jacobs]

This has happened to me twice now, and Hauppage do not give me any replies or
help. Anyway, I have this system :-

Skt 754 Athlon AMD 64 3400+ Newcastle Core @ 2448MHz (204Mhz FSB, 12X)
ABIT KV8 Pro 3rd Eye
Maxpower 300W PL-300
Win XP Pro SP2
nVidia GeForce 3 64MB AGP 4X
RAM 512 MB (2X256MB Kingston Value 333Mhz DDR)
250GB Maxtor UDMA133 IDE 7200 rpm 16MB buffer 6B250R0
Teac CDRW 516EB, Pioneer 16X DVD ROM DVD-116
PC Mark04=4107

If I am running my Hauppage WinTV PCI card and watching something, while
connected to the Internet, if there is any significant network traffic, the PC
locks up (the screen and mouse are frozen) for a few seconds. The I get a blue
and white text screen informing me that a hardware fault has occurred and a
memory dump is being written to the hard disk, and then nothing. Unless I
Reset the PC (or power off then on), the blue and white screen sits there
doing nothing. After the reboot, the partitions and information on the boot
drive have been wiped out, and there is effectively no information on the hard
disk at all! (Yowch). I have to FDISK a new partition and FORMAT C: to NTFS
again, reinstall the OS and all my apps, and rue the data that I've lost. Any
ideas what may be causing this?

 

[Yves Leclerc]

Are you running some type of firewall? If you are not, you may be
"inviting" hackers onto your system and they might be destroying your
partitions.

Hauppage is a reputable company and their TV tuners are recommended for the
Media Center Edition of XP.

 

[Mark Jacobs]

Are you running some type of firewall? If you are not, you may be
"inviting" hackers onto your system and they might be destroying your
partitions.

I was running Zone Alarm. Now I run Win XP SP2's firewall.

Hauppage is a reputable company and their TV tuners are recommended for the
Media Center Edition of XP.

When it is running, it is superb, and fabulous VFM. I paid GBP 30 for my WinTV PCI card, but I'm afraid to use it
now. Another problem were the drivers. I downloaded several different versions, because those on the CD only
liked Win9x. What are the correct drivers for it, and where would I get them?

Multimedia Video Controller
Hardware IDs - PCIIVEN_109E&DEV_036E&SUBSYS_13EBOO70&REV_11
PCIIVEN_109E&DEV_036E&SUBSYS_13EBOO70 PCIIVEN_109E&DEV_036E&CC_040000
PCIIVEN_109E&DEV_036E&CC_0400

Multimedia Controller
Hardware IDs - PCIIVEN_109E&DEV_0878&SUBSYS_13EBOO70&REV_11
PCIIVEN_109E&DEV_0878&SUBSYS_13EBOO70 PCIIVEN_109E&DEV_0878&CC_048000
PCIIVEN_109E&DEV_0878&CC_0480

TIA,

Mark Jacobs

 

[S. Taylor]

Check your hdd manufacturer's website for a diagnostic tool to see if your
hdd is going bad

 

[Mark Jacobs]

Problem solved. Apparently,

"There's a bug in the blue screen memory dump code that applies to
drives past the 137gb threshold. There's a fix, I don't remember the
name of the file you need. For some amazing reason it's not
auto-downloaded from Windows Update. The bug can be catastropically
destructive as it wraps the address."

Memory dumps are by default, enabled. Disabling them stops the 250GB hard disk
getting "walked on". The setting is under My Computer, Properties, Advanced
tab, Startup and Recovery settings, System Failure section - "Write an event
to the system log" checkbox.

Lots of technical admiration for anyone who can give me a URL to the "137GB
barrier" fix. TIA,