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Lasairfion
2007-01-28, 21:42
Recently my much beleagured PC has had a number of trials concerning hard drives, which seem to have been accompanied by grinding noises, clicks, pauses, freezing, read/write errors and of course, the Blue Screen of Death, with auto-restarts.

In the beginning I had a Western Digital WD1200 120GB IDE hard Drive and it went a bit funny, so I thought that perhaps it would be a good idea to replace it. So I bought a new Maxtor Diamondmax 10 160GB SATA II Drive would be a good replacement. It worked fine up until 11 months later when it went weird as described above, so I took it back and got a replacement. Then after a few more months I bought another one, so I had a backup drive. Then this Christmas they both went like the first and it kept rebooting with the Blue Screens of Death. So I got it to work for long enough while I went out and bought two new Western Digital 160GB SATA II Drives to replace them.

I used Norton Ghost to transfer the data across to one drive, and copied the other backup stuff on there too. I only had the one drive installed, but after just a couple of months use, the same problems. So I did a fresh windows install on the new unused drive, copied across personal stuff, and ran that.

It has barely worked 2 days before the BSOD was back. This time I managed to catch the error, which was a KERNEL STACK INPAGE ERROR. I followed the advice on various websites to check system cacheing was off, run Antivirus, run Spybot etc. and so forth. Well I've done all that, and waggled my memory sticks, and checked my leads etc. And so far things were going ok til today when I got a different blue screen of death.

hHis time I had already changed the autorestart to off, and wrote down that this was a Driver Unloaded Without Cancelling Pending Operations.

STOP: 0x000000CE
(0xF89FE36C, 0x00000000, 0xF89FE36C, 0x00000000) Partmgr.sys

With both types of bluescreens, the PC will restart, or be restarted, and wil not find the SATA drive on startup, and will look around floppies, cd drives, and even my network cable, to try and find something to boot from, then fail and sit there. If you reset or CTRL ALT DEL it does the same. You have to turn it off for a while then back on, and it usually will start up, at least until the next BSOD.

Doesn't seem to be a Hard Drive problem, despite what sites say, because it's been the same kind of problem on all of them. I know a lot of people say Maxtor drives fail young, but that's why I tried Western Digitals too, and it's the same, and I tried looking for MBR viruses, with my Avast Antivirus, and none were found.

*shrugs*

Any ideas?

Lasairfion
2007-01-29, 00:27
This time, it being set to not restart, here are the gory bits:

Kernal Stack Inpage Error

STOP: 0x0000007A

(0xC03E1AFC1, 0xC000009D, 0xF86BFE40, 0x068E5860)

SCSIPORT.SYS - Address F86BFE40 base at F86B1000, Datestamp 41107b4b

All this bluescreening is not helping the work I'm trying to get done. So all help is welcome... thanks.

Lasairfion
2007-01-29, 08:54
In what I shall ascribe to a flash of inspiration, I exited all my programmes, and then rather than clicking Start, Shut Down; I pulled the cable out the back of my hard drive whilst it was still running.

Guess what error I got? Yup, one KERNAL_STACK_INPAGE_ERROR no less. I'll be off to maplins to buy some new cables and see if that helps in any way.

Lasairfion
2007-02-04, 20:36
I bought new cables, but it's of no use, the problem still keeps happening, although for some reason now the hard drive creaks when it starts up and sometimes when it is working, wherein the whole computer pauses (along with the mouse) and then the creaking/buxx stops and the computer carries on.

It crashed last night and CHKDSK started up today when I turned it on, it replaced various files INI files to do with ODBCINST and PerfStrangBackupas well as a number of orphaned desktop links, all of which still work, but the pictures on the icons have vanished.

This hard drive is just over a month old, and has been used for about two weeks, fresh out the packet, and with a clean install of windows on it, and my personal files copied across from another hard drive bought at the same time.

Once into windows the error reporting tool said a major error had occurred, I let it send the report and the reply opened in the web browser stated:


Help and Support | Security | Microsoft Update

Problem caused by a hard disk drive error

Windows was temporarily unable to read your hard disk drive. This problem is general in nature and we are unable to determine the specific cause of the problem from the error report. In most cases this problem is temporary and can be ignored.

Common causes of this problem include:

* Large file transfers from secondary media, such as an external hard drive, to local hard drive.
* The loss of power to a hard disk drive that causes inconsistent data sectors.
* Problems entering Hibernation or Standby Mode.
* Hard drive lag caused by filter drivers, such as virus scanners.

Troubleshooting

The following steps are provided as general troubleshooting steps and may or may not prevent the problem from recurring. If you cannot resolve the problem using the following steps or are uncomfortable performing them, we recommend you contact your computer manufacturer for assistance.

1. Back up your files and folders immediately to prevent potential data loss. Go online to review article How to Use the Backup Utility to Back Up Files and Folders in Windows XP Home Edition to learn how to backup your data.
2. Run a hard disk drive error checking tool. Go online to review the article How to perform disk error checking in Windows XP to learn how to run a hard disk drive error checking utility.
3. Make sure the drive cables are plugged in. If they are plugged in and you're still receiving errors, consider replacing the drive cables.
4. Note: As a general rule, Microsoft recommends you backup your files on a regular basis in case of any unexpected hardware problems.

© 2006 Microsoft Corporation. All rights reserved. Terms of use | Accessibility | Privacy Statement | Trademarks

One of the experts on the forum also sent me a link to this page: http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;Q315266

which I have come across before, and prompted the buying of new hard disks after Christmas.

I'm thinking it's definitely hardware rather than a malware problem, so this thread is in the wrong place so it would seem, but short of replacing the motherboard as well? I really can't afford that. Although the problems do seem to be since I started using SATA drives rather than IDE. Could I really have bought so many faulty hard drives? Or is the problem on the motherboard side do you think?

Any ideas?

Lasairfion
2007-02-05, 21:25
I tried something else which I thougt might help. I kind of thought that if my PC has a supposed cabling error with regards the hard drives, then perhaps the cable at issue was not the data cable (which I replaced) but the power cable, and perhaps it wasn't the actual cable itself with the problem, but a lack of power.

So I have unplugged a couple of fans, a hard drive, 2 cd drives and taken out al the lights and it works so far.

But I did a quick check on google for sata drives needing bigger PSUs and I got a few articles including this one (excuse the language) where someone tried replacing for a more powerful PSU and still got the dreaded KERNEL_INSTACK_PAGE_ERROR.

http://www.hulver.com/scoop/story/2005/7/28/54634/6040

If you look around, there seem to be an awful lot of people replacing expensive bits of kit to solve the same problem. The earliest case though, that I've seen seems to be 2003, and that was on XP. I wonder if Windows is the issue? Maybe Vista will fix it? Though I won't hold my breath. That'll be another £100 I'm sure.

Lasairfion
2007-02-05, 21:29
Heh, I meant KERNEL_STACK_INPAGE_ERROR. See, it's been going on so long I'm my brain is turning to mush.

Lasairfion
2007-02-05, 21:54
Sorry to keep bothering this thread, but I know forums catch google spiders, anhd if this helps anyone else with the same problem, then that's got to be a good thing. I did a google search for "sata psu KERNEL_STACK_INPAGE_ERROR" and one for "sata asus KERNEL_STACK_INPAGE_ERROR" which both showed something I was starting to suspect.. and culminated in the following link...

http://forums.nvidia.com/index.php?showtopic=18923&st=0

There seems to be a worrying repetition of system specs that include asus motherboards with sata drive problems, either due to drivers, or possibly even bottlenecks on the mobos themselves.

Perhaps the answer is that Asus and SATA just don't mix.

PS. I think I heard that clicking noise again from the HDD. *sigh*

Lasairfion
2007-02-05, 22:15
Hmm if you could close this thread please, as I am taking up your space with non-malware problems. Cheers.