Frustrated! XP shut down corrupting ntfs.sys HELP!

[LarryJoe]

I am going on my fourth brand new hard drive in the last 2 months. My system is 100% stable and I leave it running 24x7. The problem arrises out of the blue upon a shut down/restart. XP starts to boot back up and then, bam, BSOD referencing a corrupt NTFS.SYS file system. There is no way to repair XP, requiring a format. I had been running RAID 0 and the last time this happened, I could not even format the hard drives. I had to RMA them. I decided to give up on RAID 0 to see if this was the problem and put a brand new Maxtor 40GB drive in alone and this morning, the same thing happened. This has got to be the most frustrating thing I have ever had to trouble shoot. I am hoping I can format this drive when I get home tonight and go thorugh the pain of reinstalling. These are the things I am going to try:

1
Replace the IDE cable with a new one.

2
Try FAT32 instead of NTFS. At least this will allow me to use Ghost again so I can make an image.

3
Look for something in XP to tweak.

I really think this is an XP shut down write problem. I vaguely remember some problems in this area posted by others. Is there a fast shut down or something I can disable? If so, where?

Any help appreciated. This really sucks.

Thanks,

LJ

 

[thefly]

I was reading on the microsoft web page that some modern cpus shut down the system so fast that the harddrive cache doesn't have time to write to the disk.

M$ has released a 2 second shutdown delay patch to address this issue. This might "fix" your problem.

 

[Fluxer]

Make sure you can't repair it. I got a corrupt system file a week ago that wouldn't allow me to boot windows so I went to reformat everything. I ran the Win xp setup from the CD, let it load, accepted the agreement, and then it gave me a list of currently installed systems. I saw my system listed and I was able to highlight it and select "R" for repair (do not confuse this with the "R" option you are given for repairs during the beginning of the Windows XP setup, this is right after you accept the agreement). After selecting "R" it automatically scanned my hard drive for problems and fixed the corrupt files. After a reboot everything was fixed and back to normal. I didn't even have to reformat or anything.

 

[saytan]

too high PCI bus == corrupted disks

 

[Barryng]

If you are overclocking, be sure to look at the memory speed. When using RDRAM, the memory defaults to a 4X multiplier for 800 MHz (100 FSB X 4 X 2 = 800 MHz). As you can see an increase in the FSB frequency also increase the effective memory speed by a factor of EIGHT. For example, when I overclocked my 1.8 Gig Northwood to 117 MHz, the memory speed was 936 MHz (117 X 4 X 2), much to fast for the Samsung 800 MHz RDRAM I am using. Although I was stable at this speed, anything faster resulted in catastrophic crashes. The higher I went, the more frequent the disastors.

I noticed you are running at 2.0 Gig CPU at 2.5 Gig. That obviously means a 125 MHz FSB. If you are running with a 4X (400 MHz) multiplier then your memory is at 4 X 125 X 2 = 1000 Mhz! For Samsung PC800 this means almost certain disastor.

I lowered the memory multiplier to 3X (300 MHz). I then was able to run my FSB at 133 MHz with no loss in memory bandwidth and with 100% stability. 133 X 3 X 2 =798 MHz, exactly at what the memory is rated for.

I think you said you are using a TH7II. If so, upgrade to MrNaturals 39C bios. It is much more stable than anything Abit has available.

BTW, I was having exactly the same symptoms you described under exactly the same circumstances. It appears that taming the memory speed solved this horrible problem. Prior to this I changed out, piece by piece, every single piece of hardware in my system without resolving the problem. I dealt with it by using a removable HDD that I kept a Ghost clone on. The hard drives you RMA'd back probably were still good. Running FDISK probably would have allowed you to reformat them.

I also suggest you check your hardware to be sure it is XP compatible. When I originally upgraded to XP, an incompatible (according to Microsoft's list) Adaptec 2910 SCSI card caused many crashes, all of which irrepairably trashed the data stored on the HDD. Replacing this card made a very noticeable improvement.

Hope this might help.

 

[Justin2050]

Actually samsung rdram can do way more than 800, or even 936, I have 2 256mb dbl-sided sticks, on a th7II running currently at 142fsb (2.56ghz i think) and like 1120mhz ram speed w/ around 46 deg. celsisus @ full load , and its perfectly stable

 

[TM]

I have also same prob. Now i run my first carttion on fat32 and system is very stable. With NTFS is hav 3-4 craches and XP didn't start. (Error: can't find c:\windows\system\config).
I use an ABIT BD7II-R, with my other boards i have not this problem.
Well FAT32 is also ok.