Laptop Probs

[weirdscientist78]

Hi there,

a friend of mine has been having problems with her laptop. itz a Sony
Vaio running XP Home.

the OS takes a long time to load and then it doesn't finish loading, it
comes up with a 'Unmountable Boot Volume' error.

the suggestion provided by scores of forums was to run chkdsk /p. then
fixboot. and chkdsk /r.
these are the steps I took:

1) was never able to run chkdsk coz I never got a prompt to work with.
so I used UBCD and got a prompt. but here I got a 'Cannot Lock
Partition' Error.

2) the recovery console thing didn't work either. I was not able to run
commads from there.
at this point I could see the 'C' Drive from Knoppix but that
changed after a few hours.

3) ran Hitachi's Drive Fitness test and came up with a 'Low System
Performance error'.

4) could not format the C Drive from UBCD(Device Management). the
operation failed. didn't tell me why.

5) ran Partition Magic to delete the C Partition and Create a new one.
it seemed to have deleted the partition but couldn't create a new one.
it said 'Partition Full'.

6) Now I am trying to format the D Drive but after 3 hours, it still is
at 7%.

in all the above circumstances I could see the D drive and the B
drive(which is the recovery partition).

and oh yes I tried the recovery wizard provided by Sony(press F10 at
boot up), that failed as well.it failed the first time with a stream
read error and the second time with a 'Disk Sense Error'.

I am not sure how to proceed with this.any help would be appreciated.

 

[Yves Leclerc]

You have done a lot of tests in order to check the system. However, all seem
to come back with a same results: disk is failing or has failed.

Re-do a Hitachi Drive Fitness test. It needs to "pass" in order for the drive
to be good/usable for XP. If it still fails, then contact Sony Tech Support
and inquire for the warranty/service options.

 

[dc]

It sounds like the disk is failing. I would take it out put it into another
machine or caddy and see what disk checking software like Ontrack reports..

dc

 

[weirdscientist78]

thatz a pretty fast response.

I cancelled Partition Magic's format. booted into UBCD and created a
new logical partition and called it D. rebooted the system and ran the
Disk Format from Device Management. the operation did not complete
successfully.

SO... I am running Hitachi's Drive Fitness again. that detects the
right hard drive. let's see how it goes.

Since D Drive is always detected and seems to work ok(except when you
run the format of course), I thought that particular partition was
messed up. maybe not.

thanks again.

 

[weirdscientist78]

ok the Hitachi Drive Fitness test failed this time.

this was the Error message I got:

"Problem detected on a non-Hitachi Disk Drive.Please contact your HDD
supplier for additional support. Disposition Code=0x70"

did that mean Hitachi can't say for sure what is wrong and ask my HDD
Mnftr for better diagnostic?

 

[NoStop]

Hi there,

a friend of mine has been having problems with her laptop. itz a Sony
Vaio running XP Home.

the OS takes a long time to load and then it doesn't finish loading, it
comes up with a 'Unmountable Boot Volume' error.

the suggestion provided by scores of forums was to run chkdsk /p. then
fixboot. and chkdsk /r.
these are the steps I took:

1) was never able to run chkdsk coz I never got a prompt to work with.
so I used UBCD and got a prompt. but here I got a 'Cannot Lock
Partition' Error.

2) the recovery console thing didn't work either. I was not able to run
commads from there.
at this point I could see the 'C' Drive from Knoppix but that
changed after a few hours.

3) ran Hitachi's Drive Fitness test and came up with a 'Low System
Performance error'.

4) could not format the C Drive from UBCD(Device Management). the
operation failed. didn't tell me why.

5) ran Partition Magic to delete the C Partition and Create a new one.
it seemed to have deleted the partition but couldn't create a new one.
it said 'Partition Full'.

6) Now I am trying to format the D Drive but after 3 hours, it still is
at 7%.

in all the above circumstances I could see the D drive and the B
drive(which is the recovery partition).

and oh yes I tried the recovery wizard provided by Sony(press F10 at
boot up), that failed as well.it failed the first time with a stream
read error and the second time with a 'Disk Sense Error'.

I am not sure how to proceed with this.any help would be appreciated.

Get a new hard drive. Yours is obviously finished.

Cheers.

--
Linux is ready for the desktop! More ready than Windoze XP.
http://tinyurl.com/ldm9d

"Computer users around the globe recognize that the most serious threats to
security exist because of inherent weaknesses in the Microsoft operating
system." McAfee

 

[Rock]

ok the Hitachi Drive Fitness test failed this time.

this was the Error message I got:

"Problem detected on a non-Hitachi Disk Drive.Please contact your HDD
supplier for additional support. Disposition Code=0x70"

did that mean Hitachi can't say for sure what is wrong and ask my HDD
Mnftr for better diagnostic?

Ask Hitachi what their error messages mean, but I would suggest you are
wasting time. Just replace the drive.

 

[weirdscientist78]

Exactly what I had to do.

works fine now.

thanks.