Is my hard disc faulty? (Boot failure, missing hal etc)

[HartleysXB]

Hi!
A few weeks ago my XP SP2 system failed with "A disc read error
occured. Press ctrl+alt+del to restart." Eventually I rebuilt the
system, attributing the problem to having a 200Gb hard disc with a
single 200Gb partition plugged into a motherboard which only supported
137Gb maximum. (Although the OS recognised the disc as 200Gb I guessed
the BIOS choked.)

Following the acquisition of an ATA 133 controller card that supports
large hard discs I deleted and recreated the partition and reinstalled
XP SP2.

Yesterday my PC failed to start. I failed to find something on the hard
disc, it checks the floppy then CD for bootable media then tries the
SCSI (as it refers to the ATA card, finds a boot sector (?), prints
SCSI ... OK and then hangs.

After booting off the XP CD (with SP2 slipstreamed) and loading the
device driver running chkdsk /p doesn't find any errors. I've tried
fixboot and fixmbr. I've tried reinstalling XP and installing a new
version in a different folder on the same partition with no joy. I've
tried copying an NT boot floppy with ntldr, ntdetect.com and boot.ini
and that fails with an error saying hal.dll is missing on both XP
installations. I have successfully run the Maxtor PowerMax software to
ensure the hard disc is OK, but the only thing I can think of is the
disc is in some way dodgy.

Is there anything I've missed out? I don't want to rebuild my system
every couple of weeks! If the hard disc is broken how do I prove it so
I can get my money back?

Thanks

Kevin

 

[dividby0]

Hi Kevin!
the solution could begin with troubleshooting. your HDD seems to be
fine, ince the Maxtor PowerMax s/w finds it that way.
Next, if there'sa msg "DISK BOOT FAILURE, INSERT SYSTEMDISK AND PRESS
ENTER", check that the IDE cable is properly attached and works fine,
or else check the power cable. In BIOS, does it detect the HDD??

Now if everything is fine, check for the CPU fan (if you get the "BLUE
SCREEN OF DEATH", the STOP msg with some text referring to memory
locations), if the CPU cooling fan stops after some time, it is faulty.

If that also works fine, turn to the software. Make sure that the copy
of the XP_SP2 that you have is perfect.
Try installing the OS fromanother CD.

The error saying hal.dll is missing, can only occur if there is a
hardware driver conflict that is causing your hal.dll (hardware
abstraction layer DLL) file to get corrupt or missing. Or it could be
that the boot.ini file in the root is misconfigured:
1. Insert and boot from your WindowsXP CD.
2. At the first R=Repair option, press the R key
3. Press the number that corresponds to the correct location for the
installation of Windows you want to repair.
Typically this will be #1
4. Type bootcfg /list to show the current entries in the BOOT.INI
file
5. Type bootcfg /rebuild to repair it
6. Take out the CD ROM and type exit

try this out and post again if it is still crapped

 

[HartleysXB]

Hi!
Many thanks for the reply.

the solution could begin with troubleshooting. your HDD seems to be
fine, ince the Maxtor PowerMax s/w finds it that way.
Next, if there'sa msg "DISK BOOT FAILURE, INSERT SYSTEMDISK AND PRESS
ENTER", check that the IDE cable is properly attached and works fine,
or else check the power cable. In BIOS, does it detect the HDD??

The BIOS in the ATA card detects the disc (as does Powermax.) I've
tried using different power connections and a different socket on the
controller card. I haven't tried replacing the cable, but it's only a
couple of weeks old and under some circumstances (see below) it can
read and write to the disc, so I think it's good.

Now if everything is fine, check for the CPU fan (if you get the "BLUE
SCREEN OF DEATH", the STOP msg with some text referring to memory
locations), if the CPU cooling fan stops after some time, it is faulty.

Nope the CPU fan is fine, I haven't seen any BSODs

If that also works fine, turn to the software. Make sure that the copy
of the XP_SP2 that you have is perfect.
Try installing the OS fromanother CD.

After I typed in this messge I dug out a copy of XP with SP1
slipstreamed, I tried installing that into a different directory on the
same partition. When the PC reboots it still fails to boot from the
hard disc. Examining the system in the recovery console shows the new
version of XP was apparently written to the hard disc successfully.

The error saying hal.dll is missing, can only occur if there is a
hardware driver conflict that is causing your hal.dll (hardware
abstraction layer DLL) file to get corrupt or missing. Or it could be
that the boot.ini file in the root is misconfigured:
1. Insert and boot from your WindowsXP CD.
2. At the first R=Repair option, press the R key
3. Press the number that corresponds to the correct location for the
installation of Windows you want to repair.
Typically this will be #1
4. Type bootcfg /list to show the current entries in the BOOT.INI
file
5. Type bootcfg /rebuild to repair it
6. Take out the CD ROM and type exit

Tried that with no joy. The thing is however I've got the additional
ATA card in the system. The boot.ini generated refers to
multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINDOWS. The BIOS thinks of this
card as a SCSI card so should the entry be SCSI instead of multi?
Shouldn't NTBootDD.sys be somewhere in evidence (it isn't) I'm
surprised it's disc / controller number 0 given it's on a in IDE
channel on a PCI card, wouldn't the motherboard provided IDE channels
be numbered first?

As I tried to explaining, I get the missing hal.dll error when I boot
off the floppy with the boot.ini above. When I try and boot off the
hard disc (which now has several XP installations it won't even show
the boot menu. Does this imply that ntdetect.com and ntldr are
inaccessable on that disc? If so I'm puzzled as to why I don't get an
explicit error rather than it just hanging.

try this out and post again if it is still crapped

Sorry - still crapped. Any further thoughts are more than welcome!

Thanks again

Kevin

 

[Anna]

Hi!
A few weeks ago my XP SP2 system failed with "A disc read error
occured. Press ctrl+alt+del to restart." Eventually I rebuilt the
system, attributing the problem to having a 200Gb hard disc with a
single 200Gb partition plugged into a motherboard which only supported
137Gb maximum. (Although the OS recognised the disc as 200Gb I guessed
the BIOS choked.)

Following the acquisition of an ATA 133 controller card that supports
large hard discs I deleted and recreated the partition and reinstalled
XP SP2.

Yesterday my PC failed to start. I failed to find something on the hard
disc, it checks the floppy then CD for bootable media then tries the
SCSI (as it refers to the ATA card, finds a boot sector (?), prints
SCSI ... OK and then hangs.

After booting off the XP CD (with SP2 slipstreamed) and loading the
device driver running chkdsk /p doesn't find any errors. I've tried
fixboot and fixmbr. I've tried reinstalling XP and installing a new
version in a different folder on the same partition with no joy. I've
tried copying an NT boot floppy with ntldr, ntdetect.com and boot.ini
and that fails with an error saying hal.dll is missing on both XP
installations. I have successfully run the Maxtor PowerMax software to
ensure the hard disc is OK, but the only thing I can think of is the
disc is in some way dodgy.

Is there anything I've missed out? I don't want to rebuild my system
every couple of weeks! If the hard disc is broken how do I prove it so
I can get my money back?

Thanks

Kevin

Kevin:
A few questions & some comments...

In your opening paragraph you state the problem surfaced when you originally
got the "disk read error" message. So that's at least *some* indication that
there's a problem with the HD. I'm assuming the system was working without
problems up to that point, yes?

Now you say you (originally) attributed the problem to the fact that you're
working with a 200 GB drive with a motherboard that does not support
large-capacity disks, i.e., disks > 137 GB. Yet at the same time you say the
system *did* recognize the full capacity of your HD. If the system did
indeed recognize the full capacity of that disk, doesn't this indicate your
MB has, in fact, large-capacity drive recognition? Why were (are) you under
the impression the MB did not support same?

(Nearly) needless to say, we're assuming in all this that your system is
virus-free and to the best of your knowledge there's no malware present that
could cause the problem you're experiencing.

On the face of it, certainly sounds like a defective HD. But you say you've
run the Maxtor diagnostic and the drive checks out OK. I can't recall as I
write this whether that particular diagnostic has both a brief test and a
more comprehensive one. So make sure (should the option be there) that you
choose the more comprehensive test of the drive. And perform the test more
than once.

And without using the PCI controller card, have you tried fresh-installing
XP to the drive more than once but always with the same problem arising?
Anna

 

[HartleysXB]

Anna :-
Many thanks for the reply.

In your opening paragraph you state the problem surfaced when you originally
got the "disk read error" message. So that's at least *some* indication that
there's a problem with the HD. I'm assuming the system was working without
problems up to that point, yes?

I replaced a couple of 20Gb drives with the 200Gb one and the system
worked fine for a two or three weeks.

Now you say you (originally) attributed the problem to the fact that you're
working with a 200 GB drive with a motherboard that does not support
large-capacity disks, i.e., disks > 137 GB. Yet at the same time you say the
system *did* recognize the full capacity of your HD.

In my initial enthusiasm I popped the 200 Gb drive in the PC, booted it
up with the BIOS drive settings set to auto and installed XP on it. XP
recognised the disc as being 200Gb in capacity and created and formated
a partition for me of that size. When I first had the problems I took a
little more interest in what the BIOS was telling me and that said the
disc was 137 Gb in capacity. Looking up support websites for my
motherboard (a PC-Chips M810L) revealed this was a known issue with no
resolution except for a new controller card as it was a hardware
limitation. (See
http://www.stud.fernuni-hagen.de/q3998142-bin/cgi-bin/ibrd/forums.cgi?forum=5)

If the system did
indeed recognize the full capacity of that disk, doesn't this indicate your
MB has, in fact, large-capacity drive recognition? Why were (are) you under
the impression the MB did not support same?

In summary it seems that XP SP2 recognised it as a 200Gb drive and the
BIOS saw it as a 137Gb drive.

(Nearly) needless to say, we're assuming in all this that your system is
virus-free and to the best of your knowledge there's no malware present that
could cause the problem you're experiencing.

I believe so - I run AVG, no other computers on my home network are
suffering, if it was a boot sector virus I would hope that fixboot in
the recovery console would take care of it and / or a fresh install of
XP should boot up.

On the face of it, certainly sounds like a defective HD. But you say you've
run the Maxtor diagnostic and the drive checks out OK. I can't recall as I
write this whether that particular diagnostic has both a brief test and a
more comprehensive one. So make sure (should the option be there) that you
choose the more comprehensive test of the drive. And perform the test more
than once.

I've run the comprehensive one (which takes an hour or so) once - I'll
give it another whirl.

And without using the PCI controller card, have you tried fresh-installing
XP to the drive more than once but always with the same problem arising?

No - I attributed the first lot of problems to the 137Gb limit and
believe that when the system tried to write a file to location on the
disc greater than 137 Gb, it would 'wrap round' and over write
something potentially vital. It seems to take a good deal of time /
data to provoke the problem, so I was not keen to take that time and
effort to provoke a problem I thought I could explain...

Anna

Thanks again

Kevin

 

[Anna]

Anna :-
Many thanks for the reply.

Kevin responds...

I replaced a couple of 20Gb drives with the 200Gb one and the system
worked fine for a two or three weeks.

Anna writes...
Kevin responds...

In my initial enthusiasm I popped the 200 Gb drive in the PC, booted it
up with the BIOS drive settings set to auto and installed XP on it. XP
recognised the disc as being 200Gb in capacity and created and formated
a partition for me of that size. When I first had the problems I took a
little more interest in what the BIOS was telling me and that said the
disc was 137 Gb in capacity. Looking up support websites for my
motherboard (a PC-Chips M810L) revealed this was a known issue with no
resolution except for a new controller card as it was a hardware
limitation. (See
http://www.stud.fernuni-hagen.de/q3998142-bin/cgi-bin/ibrd/forums.cgi?forum=5)

Anna writes...
Kevin responds...

In summary it seems that XP SP2 recognised it as a 200Gb drive and the
BIOS saw it as a 137Gb drive.

Anna writes...
Kevin responds...

I believe so - I run AVG, no other computers on my home network are
suffering, if it was a boot sector virus I would hope that fixboot in
the recovery console would take care of it and / or a fresh install of
XP should boot up.

Anna writes...
Kevin responds...

I've run the comprehensive one (which takes an hour or so) once - I'll
give it another whirl.

Anna writes...
Kevin responds...

No - I attributed the first lot of problems to the 137Gb limit and
believe that when the system tried to write a file to location on the
disc greater than 137 Gb, it would 'wrap round' and over write
something potentially vital. It seems to take a good deal of time /
data to provoke the problem, so I was not keen to take that time and
effort to provoke a problem I thought I could explain...
Thanks again
Kevin

Kevin:
I'm hesitant to dwell upon this GB large-capacity HD issue because I really
don't think it's relevant to your problem. But understand this...

There are two basic requirements for the system to recognize the full
capacity of those kinds of disks:
1. The motherboard's BIOS must support large-capacity (137 GB+) disks, and;
2. The XP OS with SP1 and/or SP2 update(s) must be present at the time the
disk is installed.

I'm reasonably (but not entirely) confident that your PC-CHIPS motherboard
supports large-capacity disks. You said the "BIOS saw it as a 137 GB" disk.
Perhaps there was some sort of BIOS option that was incorrectly set so as
the MB would recognize only the first 137 GB. I haven't worked with that
make of MB in some time so I'm not really familiar with it. But how that
would square with the OS recognizing the full-capacity of the disk (as you
said it did), I do not know.

But again, this doesn't appear to be your problem. Assuming the drive checks
out OK, try installing XP sans the PCI controller card. Make sure your drive
is properly connected & configured. That its data cable is properly secured
and the jumper is correctly set. If you have another IDE cable handy (I'm
assuming you're working with a PATA drive), use it. And, of course, it's a
80-wire cable, not a 40-pin one (the ones (unfortunately) typically used for
connecting optical drives), right?
Anna

 

[Z]

After booting off the XP CD (with SP2 slipstreamed) and loading the
device driver running chkdsk /p doesn't find any errors. I've tried
fixboot and fixmbr. I've tried reinstalling XP and installing a new
version in a different folder on the same partition with no joy. I've
tried copying an NT boot floppy with ntldr, ntdetect.com and boot.ini
and that fails with an error saying hal.dll is missing on both XP
installations. I have successfully run the Maxtor PowerMax software to
ensure the hard disc is OK, but the only thing I can think of is the
disc is in some way dodgy.

Missing hal.dll can be a bad boot.ini, you can rebuild boot.ini with
bootcfg /rebuild.

Have you tried that yet?

 

[Peter Foldes]

Check out the link below. It is the most simplest way of fixing your issue. Under the link is another way but it is slightly more complicated.



http://www.kellys-korner-xp.com/xp_haldll_missing.htm

Solution:

Verify that the computer boot.ini is present and not corrupted

1.. Verify the boot.ini file is found on the computer by using a boot diskette or use your Windows CD to get to the MS-DOS "C:\>" prompt.
2.. From this prompt edit the boot.ini, verify that it is pointing to the correct operating system, and that no anomalies are found within the file. Additional information about editing the boot.ini as well as additional information about its available options can be found on document CH000492. Below is a listing of what to verify
a.. If only one operating system is on the computer verify that the boot.ini only has one operating system listed. In some situations an alternate configuration line may be added for the same operating system, leaving the improper line.
b.. Verify that the "default=" line as well as the operating system line are the same and that they are pointing to the correct operating system.
Verify that the computer has the hal.dll file

From the MS-DOS "C:\>" prompt quickly determine if your computer has the "hal.dll" file by typing "dir hal.dll /s" at the prompt. If the computer returns a "File not found" message, the hal.dll has been deleted.

To recover this file boot the Windows operating system CD and choose the option to "restore", "repair", or "recover". This option will prompt you for the Windows installation to use, the administrators password and will allow you to restore the proper file. At the MS-DOS prompt type the following command:

expand x:\i386\hal.dl_ y:\windows\system32\hal.dll

In the above example "x" would be the letter of your CD-ROM drive and "y" the letter of the drive your operating system is installed on. If you need to determine the drive letters of your devices type "map".

Additional information about the expand command can be found on our expand help page.

Reinstall the operating system

If the boot.ini is found on the computer and does not appear to be corrupted and/or if the hal.dll file is missing it is recommended that you reinstall your Windows operating system.

Additional information about erasing everything and starting over can be found on document CH000186.

http://www.kellys-korner-xp.com/xp_haldll_missing.htm

 

[Guest]

Hi!
A few weeks ago my XP SP2 system failed with "A disc read error
occured. Press ctrl+alt+del to restart." Eventually I rebuilt the
system, attributing the problem to having a 200Gb hard disc with a
single 200Gb partition plugged into a motherboard which only supported
137Gb maximum. (Although the OS recognised the disc as 200Gb I guessed
the BIOS choked.)

A more likely cause of failure is that the hard drive has an intermittent
fault, or a bad IDE cable. A BIOS problem would have/should have caused
problems from day one.

Unless I'm mistaken, the region of the hard drive that might have been
affected by this sort of discrepancy would have been the outer tracks, not
the inner ones where the OS and boot info resides.

Following the acquisition of an ATA 133 controller card that supports
large hard discs I deleted and recreated the partition and reinstalled
XP SP2.

And this did get all the way through the XP install, correct? If so, how
long did this work?

Is there anything still connected to the mainboard IDE controller, on the
primary or secondary channel?

If not, are the motherboard IDE controllers still enabled in BIOS? If so,
try disabling the controllers that have been replaced by the PCI card.

Yesterday my PC failed to start. I failed to find something on the hard
disc, it checks the floppy then CD for bootable media then tries the
SCSI (as it refers to the ATA card, finds a boot sector (?), prints
SCSI ... OK and then hangs.

After booting off the XP CD (with SP2 slipstreamed) and loading the
device driver running chkdsk /p doesn't find any errors.

When you say "device driver" do you mean that you are using F6 to load a
driver for the ATA/133 controller?

I have successfully run the Maxtor PowerMax software to
ensure the hard disc is OK, but the only thing I can think of is the
disc is in some way dodgy.

It could be. Did you run both the quick check and the full scan?

Did you run the full scan more than once? It may be that you have an
intermittent electronic fault in the disk controller (the circuit board on
the hard drive). It wouldn't hurt to run the full scan more than once.

Is there anything I've missed out? I don't want to rebuild my system
every couple of weeks! If the hard disc is broken how do I prove it so
I can get my money back?

If I remember correctly, Maxtor diags will give you an error code if it
fails. You have to plug this and the serial number in on their website to get
an exchange.

 

[Anna]

Whoops! In my last paragraph I mistakenly wrote "40-pin" cable, instead of
"40-wire" cable which, of course, I meant. Sorry about that.
Anna

 

[HartleysXB]

Hi!
Many thanks to all who have replied so far.

I'll use this post to bring you all up to date.

A more likely cause of failure is that the hard drive has an intermittent
fault, or a bad IDE cable. A BIOS problem would have/should have caused
problems from day one.

When I first had problems I replaced the IDA cable and I have been
using 80 wire cable throughout.

Unless I'm mistaken, the region of the hard drive that might have been
affected by this sort of discrepancy would have been the outer tracks, not
the inner ones where the OS and boot info resides.

Interesting - when I'm more awake I'll ponder about the significance of
that.

And this did get all the way through the XP install, correct? If so, how
long did this work?

Yep - worked fine for two or three weeks

Is there anything still connected to the mainboard IDE controller, on the
primary or secondary channel?

Until last night the on-board primary IDE channel had nothing plugged
into it and the secondary had the DVD / DVD-writer.

If not, are the motherboard IDE controllers still enabled in BIOS? If so,
try disabling the controllers that have been replaced by the PCI card.

In my floundering around to find a resolution to problems three weeks
ago I think I tried this with no joy. However I will give it a whirl in
the future.

When you say "device driver" do you mean that you are using F6 to load a
driver for the ATA/133 controller?
Yes


It could be. Did you run both the quick check and the full scan?

Only the full scan - I've now run it twice and the disc has passed both
times.

Did you run the full scan more than once? It may be that you have an
intermittent electronic fault in the disk controller (the circuit board on
the hard drive). It wouldn't hurt to run the full scan more than once.


If I remember correctly, Maxtor diags will give you an error code if it
fails. You have to plug this and the serial number in on their website to get
an exchange.

Last night I pulled out the disc I'm having trouble with, changed its
jumpers from cable select to master only, changed the IDE cable and
tried again. No difference was made. I tried plugging the disc back
into the motherboard and that failed with "A disk read error occurred."

What I have now done is dug out an elderly 10Gb drive, plugged that
into the motherboard, the 200Gb drive back into the ATA controller card
and installed XP SP2 on the 10 Gb drive. I am now running AVG on the
system to check the 200Gb drive then I'll try housecall.antivirus.com
to see if that can spot anything. I'll also do a chkdsk / scandisk from
within XP on the 200 Gb drive. To see if that can spot something wrong.
For the hell of it I'll compare the hal.dll on my 200Gb drive with that
on my 10Gb drive to check they are the same - but I do expect them to
be.

Any further suggestions are welcome.

Thanks again

Kevin

 

[Guest]

Until last night the on-board primary IDE channel had nothing plugged
into it and the secondary had the DVD / DVD-writer.


In my floundering around to find a resolution to problems three weeks
ago I think I tried this with no joy. However I will give it a whirl in
the future.

It would be a long shot that this would make a difference. Both would be
using int 14, but if there is no drive connected, that controller should not
be generating interrrupts, unless it has flakey hardware.

This would tend to indicate a hardware issue, or corruption of a file that
is needed to boot, or an ntfs file system corruption issue. The maxtor diags
will not likely catch the latter two, but running chkdsk /r should.

Only the full scan - I've now run it twice and the disc has passed both
times.

So the full scan runs on the PCI card but not when connected to the
motherboard controller? This tends to implicate the mainboard IDE controller
as being suspect. If it worked for some number of weeks and then failed, it
would tend to indicate a h/w problem.

The fact that it still seems to work ok with the older 10gb drive tells me
that it is a timing issue - the new drive is too fast for the old controller.
It may have kept up for the few weeks that it worked, but got a little hot or
something trying to keep up and now it can't handle the modern drive.

Last night I pulled out the disc I'm having trouble with, changed its
jumpers from cable select to master only, changed the IDE cable and
tried again. No difference was made. I tried plugging the disc back
into the motherboard and that failed with "A disk read error occurred."

So the symptoms are a little different when plugged into the mainboard vs
the PCI card? If so, I would limit testing of the new drive to the PCI card
and assume that the mainboard controller is incompatible.

BTW, the IDE controller intelligence resides mainly on the circuit card on
the drive itself. The PCI/mainboard "controller" is little more than a buffer
with limited intelligence.

What I have now done is dug out an elderly 10Gb drive, plugged that
into the motherboard, the 200Gb drive back into the ATA controller card
and installed XP SP2 on the 10 Gb drive. I am now running AVG on the
system to check the 200Gb drive then I'll try housecall.antivirus.com
to see if that can spot anything. I'll also do a chkdsk / scandisk from
within XP on the 200 Gb drive. To see if that can spot something wrong.
For the hell of it I'll compare the hal.dll on my 200Gb drive with that
on my 10Gb drive to check they are the same - but I do expect them to
be.

I find that running chkdsk /r from recovery console tends to fix more
problems and more severe problems than when launching it from XP. I usually
go into RC, run chkdsk /r and after it finishes, type exit to reboot, go back
into RC and do it again until it no longer says that it 'found and fixed one
or more errors' and then run it one more time for good measure.

 

[Ron Martell]

Hi!
A few weeks ago my XP SP2 system failed with "A disc read error
occured. Press ctrl+alt+del to restart." Eventually I rebuilt the
system, attributing the problem to having a 200Gb hard disc with a
single 200Gb partition plugged into a motherboard which only supported
137Gb maximum. (Although the OS recognised the disc as 200Gb I guessed
the BIOS choked.)

Following the acquisition of an ATA 133 controller card that supports
large hard discs I deleted and recreated the partition and reinstalled
XP SP2.

Yesterday my PC failed to start. I failed to find something on the hard
disc, it checks the floppy then CD for bootable media then tries the
SCSI (as it refers to the ATA card, finds a boot sector (?), prints
SCSI ... OK and then hangs.

After booting off the XP CD (with SP2 slipstreamed) and loading the
device driver running chkdsk /p doesn't find any errors. I've tried
fixboot and fixmbr. I've tried reinstalling XP and installing a new
version in a different folder on the same partition with no joy. I've
tried copying an NT boot floppy with ntldr, ntdetect.com and boot.ini
and that fails with an error saying hal.dll is missing on both XP
installations. I have successfully run the Maxtor PowerMax software to
ensure the hard disc is OK, but the only thing I can think of is the
disc is in some way dodgy.

Is there anything I've missed out? I don't want to rebuild my system
every couple of weeks! If the hard disc is broken how do I prove it so
I can get my money back?

1. Go to the hard drive manufacturer's web site and download their
free diagnostic utility which will create a bootable diskette or CD.
Boot your computer with that and run the diagnostic test. It may take
quite a few hours for the thorough version of the diagnostic.

2. CHKDSK /P is not a command that I am familiar with and it is not
one of the listed options for CHKDSK. The command that I would use
for disk problems would be CHKDSK /R

3. Also try running BOOTCFG /REBUILD if you have not previously done
so.

4. A "last resort" would be to do a Repair Install as per the
instructions at http://michaelstevenstech.com/XPrepairinstall.htm
This will preserve your installed applications, user data files, and
configuration settings. Windows Updates will have to be reinstalled.

Good luck

Ron Martell Duncan B.C. Canada
--
Microsoft MVP
On-Line Help Computer Service
http://onlinehelp.bc.ca

In memory of a dear friend Alex Nichol MVP
http://aumha.org/alex.htm

 

[Guest]

:

2. CHKDSK /P is not a command that I am familiar with and it is not
one of the listed options for CHKDSK. The command that I would use
for disk problems would be CHKDSK /R

There are two versions of chkdsk on an xp system. One runs only from
Recovery Console, and this one has the /p switch, which forces a chkdsk to
run on a volume that is not flagged as dirty. This variant of chkdsk also has
the /r switch and seems to be better at fixing problems than the one that is
launched from within the XP GUI.