W2K SP4 and 160GB disk CORRUPTED

[AB]

Last night my windows 2000 installation managed to get corrupted and
now will not boot. I suspect this may have been caused by the way that
I installed W2k + Serice Pack 4 on a 160 GB drive.

Background:
3 months ago I build a new PC with a 160GB drive (Samsung SP1614N). I
have a Windows 2000 CD with SP1. I understand that SP4 is required to
address drives larger than 137GB, so I downloaded SP4. I attempted to
make a bootable "slipstream" W2k+SP4 CD according to some instructions
i found on the web somewhere (can't remember where). The only problem
was that the CD was not bootable despite following the instructions re
saving the boot image file.

So, I installed W2K+SP4 on a separate 6GB drive, and partitioned and
formatted the new drive into 4 partitions (max 60GB) from the small
drive. I then did a fresh W2K (SP1) install on the new drive, and
finally upgraded it to SP4 separately.

The problem:
Yesterday I installed a DVD writer and some DVD software that came
with it (on C. I also captured an hour of digital video from my
camcorder (on a different partition, F. Everything seemed fine for a
while but then it seemed every time I tried to run something I got a
message about corrupted files, and that I should run chkdsk. The PC
now won't boot - says something like NTLDR not found.

I am wondering if the problem is caused by the way I installed SP1 and
then SP4, and it still doesn't address the drive properly. Maybe once
a partition becomes x% full, it starts overwriting stuff at the start
of the partition...? I also noticed some artifacts on the video I
captured. Perhaps both C: and F: started getting corrupted due to the
amount of new data added to them yesterday.

My plan:
Install W2k (SP1 and then 4) again on the old 6GB drive, boot from
that, and rescue my D: (data) partition by copying to the small drive.
I guess I could try CHKDSK or something to try to see what's
happening.

Longer term, I have lost trust in W2k with this drive. I will probably
bite the bullet and buy XP :-(

Do you wise people have any suggestions? Did my SP1/SP4 installation
cause the problem?

Is XP Pro worth paying extra for instead of XP home?

Any advice appreciated!

thanks

 

[S.Heenan]

Last night my windows 2000 installation managed to get corrupted and
now will not boot. I suspect this may have been caused by the way that
I installed W2k + Serice Pack 4 on a 160 GB drive.

Background:
3 months ago I build a new PC with a 160GB drive (Samsung SP1614N). I
have a Windows 2000 CD with SP1. I understand that SP4 is required to
address drives larger than 137GB, so I downloaded SP4. I attempted to
make a bootable "slipstream" W2k+SP4 CD according to some instructions
i found on the web somewhere (can't remember where). The only problem
was that the CD was not bootable despite following the instructions re
saving the boot image file.

So, I installed W2K+SP4 on a separate 6GB drive, and partitioned and
formatted the new drive into 4 partitions (max 60GB) from the small
drive. I then did a fresh W2K (SP1) install on the new drive, and
finally upgraded it to SP4 separately.

The problem:
Yesterday I installed a DVD writer and some DVD software that came
with it (on C. I also captured an hour of digital video from my
camcorder (on a different partition, F. Everything seemed fine for a
while but then it seemed every time I tried to run something I got a
message about corrupted files, and that I should run chkdsk. The PC
now won't boot - says something like NTLDR not found.

I am wondering if the problem is caused by the way I installed SP1 and
then SP4, and it still doesn't address the drive properly. Maybe once
a partition becomes x% full, it starts overwriting stuff at the start
of the partition...? I also noticed some artifacts on the video I
captured. Perhaps both C: and F: started getting corrupted due to the
amount of new data added to them yesterday.

My plan:
Install W2k (SP1 and then 4) again on the old 6GB drive, boot from
that, and rescue my D: (data) partition by copying to the small drive.
I guess I could try CHKDSK or something to try to see what's
happening.

Longer term, I have lost trust in W2k with this drive. I will probably
bite the bullet and buy XP :-(

Do you wise people have any suggestions? Did my SP1/SP4 installation
cause the problem?

Is XP Pro worth paying extra for instead of XP home?

Any advice appreciated!

http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;EN-US;305098

Download Reg48bitLBA for Windows XP SP1 and Windows 2000 SP3 from here:
http://www.seagate.com/support/disc/utils.html

Verify the registry change and atapi.sys version. Your motherboard BIOS will
also need to support 48-bit LBA.

 

[Andy]

Last night my windows 2000 installation managed to get corrupted and
now will not boot. I suspect this may have been caused by the way that
I installed W2k + Serice Pack 4 on a 160 GB drive.

Background:
3 months ago I build a new PC with a 160GB drive (Samsung SP1614N). I
have a Windows 2000 CD with SP1. I understand that SP4 is required to
address drives larger than 137GB, so I downloaded SP4. I attempted to
make a bootable "slipstream" W2k+SP4 CD according to some instructions
i found on the web somewhere (can't remember where). The only problem
was that the CD was not bootable despite following the instructions re
saving the boot image file.

So, I installed W2K+SP4 on a separate 6GB drive, and partitioned and
formatted the new drive into 4 partitions (max 60GB) from the small
drive. I then did a fresh W2K (SP1) install on the new drive, and
finally upgraded it to SP4 separately.

The problem:
Yesterday I installed a DVD writer and some DVD software that came
with it (on C. I also captured an hour of digital video from my
camcorder (on a different partition, F. Everything seemed fine for a
while but then it seemed every time I tried to run something I got a
message about corrupted files, and that I should run chkdsk. The PC
now won't boot - says something like NTLDR not found.

I am wondering if the problem is caused by the way I installed SP1 and
then SP4, and it still doesn't address the drive properly. Maybe once
a partition becomes x% full, it starts overwriting stuff at the start
of the partition...? I also noticed some artifacts on the video I
captured. Perhaps both C: and F: started getting corrupted due to the
amount of new data added to them yesterday.

My plan:
Install W2k (SP1 and then 4) again on the old 6GB drive, boot from
that, and rescue my D: (data) partition by copying to the small drive.
I guess I could try CHKDSK or something to try to see what's
happening.

Longer term, I have lost trust in W2k with this drive. I will probably
bite the bullet and buy XP :-(

Do you wise people have any suggestions? Did my SP1/SP4 installation
cause the problem?

Did you by any chance allow the operating system to check and repair
the disk while it booted up during the installation process before you
applied SP4?

 

[SpellmanXP \(about to upgrade to SP2!\)]

Did you by any chance allow the operating system to check and repair
the disk while it booted up during the installation process before you
applied SP4?

Yes, yes and thrice yes! A massive improvement, just don't ask me why! I
just notice it is better.

 

[Robert E. Wilson]

I had a similar problem with W2K and a 160GB drive. No problem
initially, but as the drive filled (probably as it passed the 137GB
mark), files started getting corrupted. In researching the problem, I
found out that while W2K CAN support large drives with the later
service pack installed, it does not enable the support by default on
the built in IDE controller. There is a registry change that is
needed to enable the large drive support (don't remember where I found
this, but I think a search of the Microsoft Knowledge Base will find
it).

I still ended up reinstalling everything because of the initial
corruption.

What I now do is install on a partition that doesn't exceed the 137GB
mark. Once the Service Packs are installed, I update the registry.
Then, I set up the rest of the disk (either by moving and expanding
partitions using Partition Magic or just creating additional
partitions on the drive.

--Bob