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Interesting post. Wonder if its a particular ATI card? I have an ATI in my desktop unit here, running XP and dont have any problems like that, and that system has a gig of RAM in it. I'll do some research later on this weekend and see if I can dig up anything.
Wow thats crazy, a brand new install of windows on a formatted hard drive going screwy. Ya it must be a hardware failure. I guess you could try running windows off of a different hard drive and seeing what happens.
I just saw something online that said you get that “Windows Delayed Write Failed” error when you unplug a hard drive while its in use. So that means exactly what you said, either the hard drive is crapping out while its in use or the connection to the hard drive is crapping while its in use.
Well, it appears tonight that I got my last Mft error. My 80GB hard drive seems to have given up. I requested an RMA number from Western Digital, and I should be shipping it out later this week. I'm running my computer on Knoppix 5.1 right now, which at least still allows me to listen to my tunes. And since I don't have internet on my computer now (I can't get Linux to setup and work my wireless adapter), I'm making these posts on the living room computer.
Really ticks me off all this bad stuff keeps happening — my computer giving me hassle, my favorite jeans ripping, and a traffic ticket. And cuz of the last one, I'm gonna have almost no money left to my name. If I didn't have bad luck, I won't have any luck at all, as my mom says.
Remember we use to get similar errors, but was with the file allocation table. Although, that didnt mean that the drive was bad. Yeah, knoppix wont let you set up wireless adapters. Wireless is still something the Linux community needs to do better with. Right now, the only real option is to use the NDIS drivers supplied with a piece of hardware, and the ndiswrapper program. however, knoppix doesnt allow you to do that natively. now plugging right into the ethernet outlet works fine in Knoppix.
Knoppix has gotten me out of many binds before. Its definitely something good to have around.
Yes, Knoppix is awesome to have around, it's already gotten my butt outta 2 different situations today.
Ok, maybe I was a little too jumpy about blaming my hard drive as the main culprit to my problems. I ran WD's Data Life Diagnostic tools (DOS version), and ran the extended test 3 times, and every time it said no errors. So, I wrote all zeros to the hard drive, and reinstalled Windows, again.
Here's the interesting part. Last fall, I purchased 2 Rosewill IDE to SATA adapters for my optical drives, so I could use SATA cables instead of the big, bulky IDE cables. Well, it turns out, maybe through a hardware bug, I can't install Windows with the adapters plugged in. So, I have to take them out and put the IDE cables back. Not a big deal, until I noticed something tonight: with both optical drives (DVD-ROM and CD-RW), they wouldn't work — powering up or being recognized by BIOS. But, if I just plug my CD-RW drive in by itself, the system works fine.
I've spent the last 3 hours updating, patching, and installing programs, and no MFT error yet. Now, my engineering roommate has a theory; he thinks that the IDE to SATA adapters might be fighting with the motherboard for supremacy, causing buffer errors, which would explain the delayed write failed error. But the thing is, I've been running those adapters in my system since last September, and this problem has only been recent. Which brings him to another theory; that maybe when my other power supply was failing, those adapters (which are like little chip boards) might have taken a surge from the failing PS, something that may not have bothered the rest of my hardware, but may have seriously affected the adapters.
So, for the time being, I'm gonna try running my system with just 1 IDE optical drive, and my 2 SATA hard drives, and see what happens, cuz I have til March 6 to return my hard drive to WD. And if I don't have any problems, I'll try and contact WD to see if they can retract my RMA, so I can save if for another time (assuming my HDD isn't bad). Let's just hope that my motherboard isn't failing, cuz this has been an awesome board (and an ASUS I was looking at tonight for an AMD64 754 is still $110, ouch).
So, I'll keep posting here about my progress. And yes, Tim, I know, I haven't been on in awhile, but 2 months of computer problems will do that to someone. If my system stays stable. I should be back regularly.
Its interesting that you bring that up. A few years back we were having problems with a computer in one of our computer labs at Walsh. I got on the phone w/ Dell and they decided that it was a bad motherboard that had been causing our particular problem (what it was exactly, I dont remember). So they shipped us the new board and after it was installed, we were getting the same errors. Turns out the cause of the problem was a bad mouse. Its interesting how you think its one piece thats causing a problem when in actual fact, it could stem from another problem or be caused by something you didnt even think about.
It seems like my power supply problems were so long ago, and every thing seemed right after I replaced my failing unit. But then, not long after that, I started having issues with my system randomly locking up. It would run fine for hours without a problem. Then, suddenly, I'd no longer have internet, then programs wouldn't close, and when I'd force a shutdown or reboot, then system would freeze. Rebooting did nothing, it would just hang on Windows boot up, unless I hit F8 and load “Last Known Good Configuration”. That lasted for a few days, and then just went away. Thought maybe the computer was being stupid.
Then, this past Monday, the bomb hit. After class, I came back to my room to turn my computer. It booted up, got to Windows, and as I was logging in, I got this message: “Windows Delayed Write Failed: Windows was unable to save all the data for the file C:$Mft. The data has been lost. This error may be caused by a failure of your computer hardware or network connection. Please try to save this file elsewhere.” I hit the OK button, and the system froze. I went to reboot, and I would get a message saying that Windows was missing or had corrupt files. I thought I just needed to replace them, so I tried loading up the XP CD, but no luck on that (more info on that in another post). So, I downloaded the Knoppix 5.1 onto my roommate's computer, put it on CD, and booted it on my computer.
And the fun part: I looked into the Windows directory, and it was EMPTY (I later found out that since my Master File Table was damaged, it lost all the pointers to the system files). I was mad. So, once I got my hard drive formatted, and got Windows XP reinstalled. I thought everything was gonna be cool, cuz I was running a fresh install. Well, yesterday, I was hit with a shocking reality — as soon as I logged into Windows, I got that message again. Reboots won't work. So I let it sit for a few minutes, started it back up, and I was able to get back into Windows.
I went to do some research on the internet, and all I could come up with were posts in forums from 2004 talking about people that had systems running an ATI video card and more than 512 MB of RAM, and having their memory usage set for priority of system cache instead of programs. Well, that doesn't really apply to me, as I've never changed my memory usage to system cache. So, my last resort was to turn off write caching on all my hard drives. So, my system runs a little slower, but I don't seem to have any problems yet.
So, in the end, I have no idea what the problem is. The only thing I think it may be is either my 80GB hard drive (which is still under warranty with WD), or the SATA controller on my motherboard is going bad (which I really hope it isn't). So, the lesson is, if you ever see that message, and have a lot of data on that drive (which I don't, I know better), you better start praying, cuz if your MFT becomes corrupt enough, every bit of data on that drive could be lost forever.
Just a heads up, and explains why I haven't been around for awhile.
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