Partitioning Problem

[pingzhou]

Hi, there:

I installed an anti-virus program which brought a series of problems to my computer. I guess the program was not compatible with Windows. Anyway, since the program was installed, my computer began to hang and eventually crashed. I uninstalled it but couldn't recover my computer back so I decided to reinstall everything. I have three drives C, D and E and two removables F and G. When I tried to run fdisk, I got error message " Error reading fixed disk" and now the computer only recognizes the drives C and D and considers the removables as E and F. Although the O/S is still running, I basically can't do anything with it.

I am asking help from you and appreciate any guidance and hint. Thank you very much and have a good day.

[classicsoftware]

Determine the hard drive manufacturer and download their diagnostic software. It may it was NOT the AV software, but the disk beginning to die.

[Paul Komski]

If C, D, and your original E are all physical drives (rather than partitions on one physical drive) then check the BIOS setup to confirm that E is recognised in the BIOS.

Which OS are you using and on which volume is it installed? If you have been using WinNT/2K/XP are any of the volumes in NTFS format?

We assume you have checked all the cables and connections carefully. I couldn't work out what was going on with a HDD last week. Some PCs could use it, others couldn't and the Seagate diagnostics gave it a clean bill of health. It was missing one pin!

[pingzhou]

Thanks for the suggestions.

Finally I solved the problem related to "Error in reading fixed disk". I suggest anyone who has the similar problem to check the site at http://www.me.umn.edu/~ap/erfd.html. It helped a lot.


Now I have new problems. My computer randomly shuts down. I have to hard boot it. I got different error message each time such as ntoskrnl.exe corrupted or missing, PFN_LIST_CORRUPT, beginning dump physical memory to disk, etc. Anyone has a clue what happened?

Thanks and have a good weekend!

[classicsoftware]

I reiterate my earlier suggestion. It sounds like the drive is having problems. Please check it out nefore it's too late..... :eek:

[Paul Komski]

Its looking more and more likely that you are using Win2K but you dont appear to hve really tried the suggestions made to you or answered questions you were asked or told us which of the various procedures open to you that you actually used to solve your original problem. If you used wipeout then just the mbr is zeroed (which thus emulates a brand new hdd) without actually zeroing the whole drive or checking the sectors on it.

The ref to PFN_LIST_CORRUPT can be caused, amongst other things, by corrupt drivers or bad RAM. The more relevant information that you can provide then the greater the likelihood of giving you good advice will be.

[pingzhou]

I did check my hard disk and all the links. Actually I used the driver and diagnostic tool provided by the hard disk manufacturer. I installed W2k. I also changed the bio setting for the physical RAM size equal to the size of video RAM. I downloaded W2k's service pack 4 and upgrade IE to 6. What else do I need to check? I just don't understand why it used to work fine but now it has such headache problems.

Thanks, everyone, for your time and support.

[Paul Komski]

I also changed the bio setting for the physical RAM size equal to the size of video RAM.
Can you elaborate exactly what you reset?

Try checking the RAM with a RAM tester such as DocMemory from http://www.simmtester.com or http://www.docmemory.com or try swapping your RAM around or trying a brand new stick appropriate for your mobo.

This won't detect a corrupt hardware driver, which is another possible or even likely cause. If a driver is causing memory pages to be swapped incorrectly or repeatedly in a loop such symptoms could arise.

Try running the PC with the mimimum of hardware attached to see if this resolves the problem and only add it back in one piece at a time. I think you can also check to see if all the hardware is compatible with Win2K as you can with WinXP but I'm not sure about this.

Are your HDDs partitioned or does each one contain a single partition?