Is my HDD to blame here?

[djfada]

setup:

Mobo: M.S.I K9N ultra
CPU: AMD Athlon64 x2 4200+
HD: Maxtor 160GB IDE
RAM: 2GB ddr2
GFX: ATI radeon x1650
SOUND: Sounblaster X-fi fatality
IDE optical drive
450W psu

A couple of nights ago my PC crashed, and when i rebooted it came up with a screen saying something along the lines of 'XXXX file has become corrupted, boot from original installation disc and press 'r' for recovery console'

When ive tried to repair the installation or reinstall xp, i gets to having to press F8 to agree with the license then crashes to a blue screen saying 'Page file error in non-paged area'

Ive tried different XP discs, different optical drives, removing RAM, removing soundcard and other internal cards etc. And still get the same bsod after pressing F8

So is this the harddrive?

Even before the crash i was planning to replace my ide hardrive and optical drive with sata ones, because running IDe on the k9n ultra has never been very fast due to the drives being bottlenecked, but its always been stable, just slow.


any thoughts?


and thanks in advance

 

[kimsland]

Start with a CheckDisk from the recovery console by using the Windows CD
Here's how:
Boot from the Windows CD
Press R (this is the first "R" prompt you come to)
Select an Administrator account, ie press 1
After pressing 1, then press Enter key
At last on the Recovery Console, type the following:
chkdsk c: /f
You can also type chkdsk c: /? to view all the options of CheckDisk

Hopefully things are repaired
If so, remove the CD then type Exit, and restart your computer
It's possible at this stage Windows may even load
If not, continue on
By the way, if Windows crashes again, you may need to run CheckDisk again before continuing

Here are the steps to perform a Repair:
Microsoft's Windows XP Professional Repair Install step by step
Microsoft's Windows XP Home Repair Install step by step

If that still has issues, you may have a hardware issue, try these tests to confirm:
Please run Memtest on your Ram
Please run a Drive Diagnostics on your HardDrive

This may keep you busy for a while
Please report back on progress

 

[djfada]

Start with a CheckDisk from the recovery console by using the Windows CD
Here's how:
Boot from the Windows CD
Press R (this is the first "R" prompt you come to)
Select an Administrator account, ie press 1
After pressing 1, then press Enter key

when i press 1 and enter to select the drive, it blue screens

with PAGE_FAULT_IN_NONPAGED_AREA


tehcnical information:

*** STOP: 0x00000050 (0xC9140000, 0x00000000, 0x8080B20D, 0x00000000)

btw, its XP home i have installed at the minute if that makes any difference

 

[kimsland]

This problem may occur if there is a conflict between Windows XP SP1 and the display adapter drivers that are currently installed.

Another link, stating possible Spyware infection: http://support.microsoft.com/kb/894278

Looks like a software issue at this point

Backup by removing the HardDrive and plugging it into another computer:
Either through USB adaptor, or internally as a secondary drive to a working computer.

Once all backed up, return the drive
Then run a clean install, by removing the partition first (note you can do this when it's plugged into the other computer too)

Continue the clean (fresh) install

 

[djfada]

i have everything i need backed up onto DVDs allready so thats not an issue...

so ive tried reinstalling and again get the blue screen :/

i guess ill have to see if i can delete the partition using another comp

btw it was SP3 this installation had, and also thanks a lot for the help so far, i really appreciate it

 

[kimsland]

That's ok
But the Windows CD you are putting in, is that SP3 with Windows?
Because I have SP3, but my original CD is actually Windows Xp with SP1

Anyway, you may be able to use a boot CD like the free Gparted live boot CD, to remove the partition(s) instead of relocating the drive to do this.

Note once the Partition is removed. There is no need to format, or create any partition manually.
As Windows Xp install will automatically create a formatted partition to NTFS during setup, automatically

 

[djfada]

yeh you're right, original CD has sp1


ill try this gparted tihgn and see if that helps


thanks

 

[kimsland]

(Had to wink )

By the way, you could sell your Xp SP1 (maybe even with a computer)

And purchase an authentic Windows Xp Home which includes SP3 from here:
XP Home: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16832116511

It's pretty cheap. And if you do what you're saying you want to do, then you will have to do the following
Install Windows XP SP1 clean (hooray!)
Update to SP2 (MS has made it, that you cannot put SP3 on SP1, how annoying is that!)
Update to SP3 (on top of SP2, on top of SP1)
Then do all the Windows updates since SP3 was released (already a few)

Otherwise you may need to spend a lot of time just having Windows installed
By the way, MS presently does not support users who have XP SP1 originally!, so that's a concern too.

 

[djfada]

Well i need an os for a fairly low spec (yes even lower than my main one lol) desktop i have ready to put together once ive bought a few more bits. Only for streaming audio for internet radio and also some light browsing. So i suppose the sp1 could be put to good use there


my main PC is used for audio software (cubase sx, wavelab etc) so i could get the sp3 as you say for that machine, plus i dont want the audio machine online this time round so it does make a lot of sense....


oh yeh and as far as i can tell the HD has had it hehe, but thanks a lot for the ideas they were worth a try, wouldve been handy to have put the old drive in my little online machine.



anyway, thanks a lot for your advice & time

 

[Munckis]

A tool that might be helpful to you, and one that I use ALL the time is Spinrite. Search it out on google or i think spinrite,com will take you right to the page. I know at $89 it's a bit pricey, but it does wonders on HDD's as far as letting you know the state the drive is in, and more often than not will bring a non booting machine back to life if the problem was due to HDD failure of sorts. And if you do alot of tech work this is an invaluable tool.