Watch out what you tweak of your system

[Mictlan]

I managed to corrupt my Windows installation, this weekend while trying to get my modem to work..... Let me try to explain.

In my old rig (an Iwill BD100+) I used a US Robotics Internal Fax Modem ISA card. When I upgraded to the Iwill DVD266u-RN, I had to buy a new fax modem as the new mobo does not have ISA ports. So after a quick try I bought an US Robotics Internal Fax Modem PCI.....but I have had some problem with it as sometimes does not work. Well, I have been tweaking it and beating the card into submition when I checked my HD properties and saw that I could enable DMA protocol. My two HD are a little old (a 3 year old IBM 10.3 GB IDE hard drive (UDMA 33) and a year old Maxtor (23 GB IDE hard drive (UDMA 33)) I decided to enable DMA in the properties setting and rebooted. Well it posted, but when it tried to load windows and error message appeared saying that the NAV couldn't load. Iclicked OK, but fournd that the display has changed into 16 colors 640*480 configuration. And then the Hardware wizard appeared.....saying that the monitor drivers were mising (?????). Well I directed Windows into the folder where the drivers are located and continue, but then the kernel crashed.....I rebooted and tried to upload WIndows into SAfe mode, but with no luck.....After some cursing, I turned off the computer, let her rest some hours (the problem ocurred at 1 am this Sunday, so I was kind of sleppy) and in the morning I decided to give it another try. No luck.....the same error over and over.

So after looking into the innards of the computer, double checking that all the connections were good, no Heatsink fallen over or similar hardware problems, I went for my floppy with the CD DOS drivers and my WIndows installation booting CD and decided to boot with any of this media. I had no luck with the CD. Everytime I tried to boot with the CD the system crashed. Well, I booted with the floppy(man, I really love booting with a floppy, last resource but always is there to help me) and then reinstalled Windows ME.

After doing that, SETI loaded like always (I was worried that the 20 WU I had stored at my HD were lost but I manage to save them), a let the SETI crunch while I went out the Sunday afternoon with my girlfriend. When I returned I look with horror that SETISpy is indicating idle.....and when I restart it manually I found that when I put the mouse pointer over the SETISpy or SETIDriver window I can see that the pointer changes rapidly from normal to busy. Like if the program was stopping and restarting with every tick of the clock.....

Well, I really don't know how to fix this.....I even tried to install Windows XP Pro (I have been waiting to get my new HD, but now would seem like a good time to try it) but the installer detect an error in the HD, aborting the installation of Windows XP. Tonight I'll try to fdisk format, format and install Windows XP in to the same drive and see if with this I can correct all this problems (and squezze some more WU out of this box).

In the end I will give you some good advice:

1.-When tweaking your system, write down everything you do. That way you can always backtrack if you frag your system.

2.-Everytime you do something that you think could speed up your system, reboot to see if that change do not crash your system.

3.-Always have a booting media available. Be it a floppy or a CD, always have one.....its better than having a rig down while you find one.

Thank you for hearing me vent all my frustation.....One quick question: Should I format my HD with FAT32 or with NFTS?

[TC]

Sorry to hear about all your trouble. Enabling DMA for a device that doesn't support it will usually cause the OS to crash when rebooting, but safe mode should have let you back in to turn DMA off. It sounds like the disk was corrupted in the process, but it should not be physically damaged. If you can't use fdisk on it then there's definitely a problem. As a last resort you can try a low-level format program. I have one made by Maxtor, but I've used it on several brands of drives.

NTFS is a better file system, but bear in mind it's not compatible with any dos apps, and if you need to use an emergency boot floppy you won't be able to access anything on your hard drive. One option is to format a system partition with fat 32, and have a program partition formatted in ntfs. Unless you're working in a networked environment with a lot of sharing going on and security levels, etc. I see no compelling reason to use ntfs. When you install XP make sure you setup the emergency repair console option. I believe it's available in XP but you'll have to search for it under help.

[Mictlan]

THKS, TC..... I'll be using FAT32 then, as I will be upgrading my HD system to a RAID array somewhere in the future (seems more distance this days.....) I think my priority will be to save for the 2 Tualatins I need to increase my output.....30 Gigs of space seems enough for me this days......I can always unistall my unusued games :)

[Mictlan]

This is beginning to be more serious than I thought. Yesterday I tried to start the computer and it wouldn't start until I cleared the CMOS. When I changed the setting to 8.5x100 MHz as a working frecuency it wouldn't POST. Well I cleared the CMOS again and managd to restart with the Windows XP CD as a booting device.

I then proceded to format (with FAT32) the main HD (a MAxtor 23 GB HD) and when it reached almost the 100% a BSOD appeared saying that WIndows has detected and illegal operation and would shut down. I restarted a everything went normal until I reached the Scandisk routine, where WIndows detected that the was an error in the HD and couldn't correct it. :'( I rebooted and deleted the partition of the HD and found I couldn't assign all the space to the same partition (21010 MB free space), 8 MBhad to be left unused, I assigned the remaining space to a whole partition (C:) and then formated the disk again (FAT32), but again after finishing the same BSOD. *****aarghhhh***** Even if I try to install the Windows into the other HD (an IBM 10.7 GB HD) it would detect the error in the first drive *****aarghhhh*****

Today's experiment will be unplugging the 23 GB HD and see if I can install Windows XP (even WIndows ME would be tested later if no luck with the XP) into the smaller drive.