Hdd woes under 98se on vectra vli8

[mr.miffed]

I posted awhile ago about some series data corruption issues i experiencing under windows 98se.

I can install everything fine but after awhile the system crashes and won't boot, scandisk finds a multitude of long filenames and invalid directories. Upon dir'ing said directories under dos the are filled with nonsense and report sizes bigger than the capacity of the drive!

Now I though I had the problem licked after discovering that the drive was'nt mounted properly and was probably rattling, Its now firmly fixed to the box with regulation screws.

After a recent crash I copied my win98 folder to my D: partition(drive is a 40g maxtor partitioned into two 20 gig partitions) and installed from that.

After i reinstalled windows and the following software:-

Nero 6
Divx, 3vix and Xvid codecs.
Wmplayer 9
Graphics card drivers for an mga-200
NIC drivers
ABC bitorrent client
Forte agent
winrar
winzip
audio drivers
mouse drivers
direct x 9
and all windows updates
zonealarm

I then tried to unzip an ISO I had d/l'd from bitorrent, got the end and bam! crash. would'nt boot and had the same corruption problem.

Everythings been completely scanned for virus with an online scan and came back clean,

I repeated the process, same problem AND same folders! Identical system folders had been corrupted! C:\WINDOWS\SYSTEM\COLOR and C:\WINDOWS\SYSTEM\OOBE\(all sub folders).

After each reinstall c: was reformatted.

So any advice?

Some viral or malware code that was'nt picked up by the scan within the rar'ed iso? thing is the same error has been occurring since I built the system a couple of months ago, but this is the first time I've been able to identify specfic folder corruption.

the COLOR folder had an awesome set of files of single letters of every letter of the alphabet in all their accentted forms, though some letters were merely standard english.

This error has occured over over full repartioning and Formatting of drives and only affects the c: partition, sometimes data written from C: to D: is corrupt but never with the odd filenames or sizes, for instance mpegs that played fine on c: now come back as invalid files in media player.

Maxblast(or whixhever one is matroxs diagnostics disk, powermax maybe?) finds the drive error free under the most strenuous of tests, the disk nevers seems to run hot and my processers heat skin is never more than luke warm. Memtest finds my ram error free.

I'm beginng to suspect a faulty windows disk. Its seems odd to me to recieve the same corruption in the same folders three times in total!(the first time was'nt unraring anything).

Any theories would be most helpfull.

Original thread here

[Sly]

From what I have read in this post and the other, I have this to ask,

1. Did you ever use any over-lay?
• If so than the parameters are wrong and need to be re-certified to factory specs. (just buy another Drive, over-lay realey suck)

That’s just one thing that could be wrong.

2. The media could be corrupt,

• Try a different disc to install windows, load and run all up-dates before adding or running any other programs.

[mr.miffed]

From what I have read in this post and the other, I have this to ask,

1. Did you ever use any over-lay?
• If so than the parameters are wrong and need to be re-certified to factory specs. (just buy another Drive, over-lay realey suck)

That’s just one thing that could be wrong.

2. The media could be corrupt,

• Try a different disc to install windows, load and run all up-dates before adding or running any other programs.

I never installed the overlay.

I suspect my windows disk too, I'll borrow a friends and install of it to see it makes a difference.

I guess if that does'nt work its a hardware issue.

[hudsonsmith]

Try a new ide cable.

[nunob]

You might copy the cabs to the hd and install from there also.

[mr.miffed]

Cheers for the advice fellas.

I checked the IDE cables and they're both 80pin cables, whether or not they're properly shielded is another question altogether.

I have been installing from the hdd too.

Last night I had a ovely crash, I had agent running, two IE windows and emule, I started Gozilla to download some files and everything froze. I thought that that was nothing too much to worry about so hit ctrl+alt+del after it eventually brought up the dialog it froze again, I still mouse movement though, restarted the machine, hung on boot. Used a boot disk and and ran scandisk on c: "scandisk can not scan this drive", Then I tried to Dir C:, "invalid media type", hit f for fail "Int 24 failure".

Right so thats a FAT error what the heck could cause corrupted data to appear on the system files of c: and destroy the partition whilst leaving other partitions on the same drive untouched?

I think I should buy a MAC.

[confus-ed]

I think I should buy a MAC.

I think maybe you want to stop using emule, kazza & bit torrent !

Right so thats a FAT error what the heck could cause corrupted data to appear on the system files of c: and destroy the partition whilst leaving other partitions on the same drive untouched

Well you never apparently fdisked as far as I can see & given the places you've been visiting I'd say try & find the 'zero fill' utility that matches your drive- this will completely erase everything (well technically it doesn't completely as there's all that offset track stuff, but it'll be one 'hell smart' nasty that can get around that) - init 24 failure being I believe something to do with cyclinder boundaries & partitions.

[mr.miffed]

I think maybe you want to stop using emule, kazza & bit torrent !



Well you never apparently fdisked as far as I can see & given the places you've been visiting I'd say try & find the 'zero fill' utility that matches your drive- this will completely erase everything (well technically it doesn't completely as there's all that offset track stuff, but it'll be one 'hell smart' nasty that can get around that) - init 24 failure being I believe something to do with cyclinder boundaries & partitions.

Cylinder boundaries you say?

Hmmmm, I suspected way back when I first installed the drive that my vios may have been misreporting the CHS of the drive.

I do think that perhaps a complete fdisking may be required. I think I'll back everything up when I get home from work and then start from scratch.

[mr.miffed]

Hmmmmmm, after a google search I've just found an amazing amount of viruses that encrypt data and hook INT24 so Dos won't see the C: drive after a restart.

I don't understand though, I've done a bizillion online scans and its never found any malicious code, unless its in the boot sector of my boot disk or something.

If this is a virus I'm going to be very annoyed.

*edit*

Oh yeah I guess I should also mention, I had some trouble with files Becoming "locked" i.e. exe's would'nt exe and when I tried to delete them, I got filesystem errors and "check to make sure the disk is not write protected or full" type things.