STRANGE problem

[zapoqx]

I had a strange thing happen about 40 min ago. I was talkin with someone on Trillian and had my PVR program going with my 2nd moniter handling the PVR feed. All of a sudden, my whole system froze! My TV was frozen yet I still had sound, and then 5 seconds later... my system restarted. However, after the mem check, it went to my Sata IDE detection screen, and from there, it froze on that screen after showing the hard drive.

After trying to restart, it went past the mem check and then it went to the SATA ide detection screen and NO DEVICES FOUND! So it tried to boot and froze on the Fade in of the Windows starting up screen.

I turned off my system for about 5 min, turned it back on and it booted everything fine except when I got into windows, got Trillian turned on and got my PVR opened and BAM! 2 error messages came up with almost the same message but one of them I didn't get the full info. Here is what the error said:

Windows was unable to save all the data for the file \Device\HarddiskVolume1\$Mft. The data has been lost. This error may be caused by a failure of your computer hardware or Network Connection. Please save this file elseware.

What the heck just happened to my system cause this can't be a software issue with what just happened.

 

[Lonman]

I Googled "Windows was unable to save all the data for the file \Device\HarddiskVolume1\$Mft," and came up with a page full of results. I suggest you do the same (Google the error message) and read up on it... it's all pretty much in geek speak over my head. The gist of it, that I do understand, is Master File Table corruption and to run a chkdsk /f on the drive to fix it.

Good luck.

 

[zapoqx]

Thanks, I'll be doing that in a moment.

 

[Son Goku]

Two things come to mind, without looking further into this:

- A hard drive might be going bad on you
- The mobo might be going bad (aka the SATA bus itself).

A chkdsk /f does definitely seem in order (though be advised that a problem with your motherboard could also show up as problems with the hard drive).

If it comes up with bad sectors, (what the /f does, is check for bad sectors); then let it repair them if it asks and will...

However, if you get anything along the lines of "track 0, sector 0 bad" or one of the early critical sectors on the drive, it might be time to

- test it on another system (if you can, and just in case the problem wasn't the drive). If it shows up this way in another system or you decide not to test

- Buy a new drive.

Be advised however, that in the past when I've seen RAM go bad, it had shown up as a whole host of other problems and weird error messages that kept comming up. Even error messages for things that were fixed by a former service pack, or errors that were goboldy gook (aka the error code showed up as not even defined by Microsoft).

I would definitely take a look at your drive, and possibly your motherboard (especially if other problems not related to the HD itself start cropping up).

 

[zapoqx]

Thanks. I will be going home on Wednesday.

Based on what you suggested Lonman, It did fix it.

Son Goku, Thanks for the explanation. I have tested the memory and no errors come up. My father and I have been discussing the problems with my system and we have come up with a possible understanding as why this happened to my system.

When I moved, my old case was beat up quite badly. In fact, one of my covers were pushed in, my HD bay was bent down along with a few other things.

I got a new case, nothin seemed to be broken and we managed to get the case salvaged for use as a server.

I've had problems since I have been here (one including where my power supply may be going but not too sure), but it was where my system would restart for no reason. My SATA board is a PCI add-on. But then again, all I gotta do is hold out til around March and I'll have a good system (Hopefully an AMD Duel Core, 120+ GB SATA HD's, better vid card than my crap FX 5200, and possibly SLI able Mobo).

Again, thanks for everything.