Intermittent Registry corruption during shutdown :(

[ESPNSTI]

Hi there.

I seem to have an annoying problem where every once in a while (anywhere
from several months to a few weeks apart), where the registry seems to get
corrupted.

In all situations that I can recall, the system is working fine, I shut down
without problems (it doesn't take long or hang or anything like that).
Then the next time I start up, I get some sort of registry related error,
for example:
I get the user profile is corrupt error, or a stop error of some sort
complaining about the registry hive, or today for example, one about it not
being able to access the boot device (or something along those lines).

Now because I see no sign of a problem while Windows is running, I suspect
that it gets corrupted during shutdown.
My question is, how late during shutdown does the registry get written?
For example, should I be worried that I still see the HDD light blinking
just a fraction of a second before it powers down?
Is there a way to prevent it from powering down, and instead show the "it's
now safe to shut down" screen.
Or even better, is there some shutdown delay setting that will tell it to
wait, say 10 seconds before powering down?

Anyway, I have ran all sorts of hardware checks I can think of, Memory, HDD,
etc... and I've never found a problem (anyone have recommendations regarding
hardware testing tools?).

I think I have pretty decent quality hardware (if I say so myself), all name
brand stuff:

Motherboard: Intel D845BGSE
CPU: Intel P4 1.8Ghz Northwood (512kb Cache Sock478)
Memory: 2x 512MB Samsung PC2100 DDR - 266Mhz (total of 1GB)
Graphics card: PNY Verto NVidia Geforce 4 Ti4400
Network card: 3Com 3c905B-TX
Sound card: Creative Labs Audigy Gamer
DVD-Rom: Lite-On LTD-163D
DVD-RW: Pioner DVR-A04
HDD: IBM / Hitachi 40GB 7200rpm p/n: IC35L040AVVA07-0 (
http://www.hitachigst.com/hdd/desk/ds120gxp.htm )
Keyboard and Mouse: Logitech Freedom Optical (not connected to USB)
USB device: Logitech Wingman Formula Force (the original model)

As for software:

Win2K SP4, usually have all the updates from Windows Update loaded (except
for WMP9).
I'm usually pretty good keeping the bad stuff off of my computer using
things like Norton Antivirus 2003, AdAware and SpyBot Search & Destroy.
Of course I have a whole bunch of other stuff installed.

Anyway, any input is appreciated,
Thanks!

 

[Dave Patrick]

This article may be of interest.

Possible Data Loss After You Enable the "Write Cache Enabled" Feature
http://support.microsoft.com/?id=281672


--
Regards,

Dave Patrick ....Please no email replies - reply in newsgroup.
Microsoft Certified Professional
Microsoft MVP [Windows]
http://www.microsoft.com/protect

:
| Hi there.
|
| I seem to have an annoying problem where every once in a while (anywhere
| from several months to a few weeks apart), where the registry seems to get
| corrupted.
|
| In all situations that I can recall, the system is working fine, I shut
down
| without problems (it doesn't take long or hang or anything like that).
| Then the next time I start up, I get some sort of registry related error,
| for example:
| I get the user profile is corrupt error, or a stop error of some sort
| complaining about the registry hive, or today for example, one about it
not
| being able to access the boot device (or something along those lines).
|
| Now because I see no sign of a problem while Windows is running, I suspect
| that it gets corrupted during shutdown.
| My question is, how late during shutdown does the registry get written?
| For example, should I be worried that I still see the HDD light blinking
| just a fraction of a second before it powers down?
| Is there a way to prevent it from powering down, and instead show the
"it's
| now safe to shut down" screen.
| Or even better, is there some shutdown delay setting that will tell it to
| wait, say 10 seconds before powering down?
|
| Anyway, I have ran all sorts of hardware checks I can think of, Memory,
HDD,
| etc... and I've never found a problem (anyone have recommendations
regarding
| hardware testing tools?).
|
| I think I have pretty decent quality hardware (if I say so myself), all
name
| brand stuff:
|
| Motherboard: Intel D845BGSE
| CPU: Intel P4 1.8Ghz Northwood (512kb Cache Sock478)
| Memory: 2x 512MB Samsung PC2100 DDR - 266Mhz (total of 1GB)
| Graphics card: PNY Verto NVidia Geforce 4 Ti4400
| Network card: 3Com 3c905B-TX
| Sound card: Creative Labs Audigy Gamer
| DVD-Rom: Lite-On LTD-163D
| DVD-RW: Pioner DVR-A04
| HDD: IBM / Hitachi 40GB 7200rpm p/n: IC35L040AVVA07-0 (
| http://www.hitachigst.com/hdd/desk/ds120gxp.htm )
| Keyboard and Mouse: Logitech Freedom Optical (not connected to USB)
| USB device: Logitech Wingman Formula Force (the original model)
|
| As for software:
|
| Win2K SP4, usually have all the updates from Windows Update loaded (except
| for WMP9).
| I'm usually pretty good keeping the bad stuff off of my computer using
| things like Norton Antivirus 2003, AdAware and SpyBot Search & Destroy.
| Of course I have a whole bunch of other stuff installed.
|
| Anyway, any input is appreciated,
| Thanks!
|
|

 

[ESPNSTI]

Interesting article and thanks for the reply, but it says it only applies to
SCSI devices, and it says it was fixed in Win2k SP3.
I have an IDE HDD connected directory to the motherboard (no interface card)
and I'm running Win2K SP4.
I will check on those two files mentioned, to make sure they're the right
version though.

 

[Dave Patrick]

The main point is to be sure write cache is not enabled as the OS might
shutdown before the drive controller can finalize the registry at shutdown.

--
Regards,

Dave Patrick ....Please no email replies - reply in newsgroup.
Microsoft Certified Professional
Microsoft MVP [Windows]
http://www.microsoft.com/protect

"ESPNSTI"wrote:
| Interesting article and thanks for the reply, but it says it only applies
to
| SCSI devices, and it says it was fixed in Win2k SP3.
| I have an IDE HDD connected directory to the motherboard (no interface
card)
| and I'm running Win2K SP4.
| I will check on those two files mentioned, to make sure they're the right
| version though.

 

[ESPNSTI]

Well I understand that this problem is happening in part because write cache
is on.
Of course I would like to have write cache on, and if it wasn't for some
"condition" in the system somewhere, it should have no problem operating
with write cache on.

To me not having write cache on is as bad if not worse than having to deal
with registry corruption.