Tony Posted June 2, 2003 Report Share Posted June 2, 2003 Hi allI am sorry that this is a long post, but i have tried to cover everything in it.Please see link in my sig for full system specI am running XP Home SP1 fully updated with MS updates and drivers.It has always been set to turn on Screen Saver (United Devices) after 5 mins of no use, then turn off the monitor after 20mins, Hdd was set never to turn off.On Thursday the system was in screen saver mode with monitor turned off for a couple of hours, then when i went to use it, i waggled the mouse, and the desktop appeared as normal. Then when i clicked on anything with the mouse the system just hung, not even Control alt Delete would do anything. So i was forced to hit the reset switch.The system started then just after the POST i got a message about "Master Boot Record" i think it said it was corrupted, and to use boot magic to sort it out. (i have never had boot magic installed on this PC??? ).So i turned it off for a min then tried again, this time it was ok, but it did do a Check Disk on booting XP ( it reported a few error's and check disk fixed them)Once i was in XP i backed up my Outlook PST file and any other important stuff on to my second HDD (just in case).I then did a full virus scan with updated AVG, also scaned system with Adaware 6 and Spybot search & distroy (all was clear), then i did check disk on all of my partitions (5 of them) plus defraged them all.Then i was thinking what has changed with my system in the last couple of days.On Thursday i got 2 Windows critical updates (but can't remember anything about them other than that they were for security) and i also installed MS Flight Sim 2002.So i uninstalled Flight Sim 2002 and turned of my screen saver and also set XP never to turn off the monitor.Restarted the system lot's of times with no trouble, I even left the pc for 12 hours and then turned it off and on again with no trouble. Then i just thought over the next week or so i would just turn on the things i had turned off one by one with a couple off days in between. then install Flight Sim again.Then on Sunday while my son was on the internet the system just hung (same as before a reset needed. Then i got the master Boot record error again after thr POST.So i turned off the machine and tried again.This time it looked like XP was loading then i got a VERY quick flash of a BSOD and then the system reboots, this time saying the there was a problem with the last boot up, and gives me the opions to start normally or Start in safe mode, and last good config + a few others.So i thought that i would go to safe mode and do a system restore, but it will not go to safe mode, it try's to boot in safe mode but then just reboots, and i get the same options again. So selecting start the system normally, i get the VERY quick flash of the BSOD again and the system reboots, if i leave it it will just do this in a loop. ( i have no chance of reading the error messege on the BSOD as it is there for less than a second.So is there away to sort this with out a format and re-install?, i don't mind doing a re-install but it is just this Masterboot record error that worries me. will it mess up my other partitions on the HDD? as i don't want to loose this data.Thanks for any helpTony Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mark2 Posted June 2, 2003 Report Share Posted June 2, 2003 Boot into last known good config, a hardware fault can cause this as can something like ECCD if 'go back' installs Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Tony Posted June 2, 2003 Author Report Share Posted June 2, 2003 Thanks for the reply.Well what i did was put an old 20gb HDD in my systsm and set it to master & the one that is giving me problems i set to slave.Then installed XP on the 20 gb HDD, then set up it up on the network, and copied 3.7gb of data over to my wifes PC. (ok it was data that at a push i could live with out, but i did not really want to)Once all the back up was done, i went to Maxtor's website (make of HDD giving me problems) and downloaded there "POWER-MAX diagnostic tool (it will work on any HDD as long as one of the HDD's in the PC is a Maxtor one).I then set the tool running to do a disk scan, and it found problems with the HDD, and advised running the advanced test, this found and fixed the problems, i then ran it again and it found no problems :D So i tried to boot XP and all is ok :) I will see how it goes over the next week or so, so with a bit of luck it has solved any probs with the HDD, if not at least, i have everything backed up ready for when i need a new one.Tony Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mark2 Posted June 2, 2003 Report Share Posted June 2, 2003 Glad it's sorted, Last Known good config is handy too,got me out of the @%"* when ECCD ijnstalled 'go back' which resulted in a continuous loop Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Tony Posted June 2, 2003 Author Report Share Posted June 2, 2003 HiI did try that yestaday, but it did not work either :( Tony Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Recommended Posts
Join the conversation
You can post now and register later. If you have an account, sign in now to post with your account.