Zatoichi Update: The Solution To My Problems...Maybe?
Tuesday, February 24, 2004 at 6:49 pm
Windows XP Annoyances Discussion Forum
Posted by Zatoichi
(3 messages posted)
My solution is sort of a guess. But, bear in mind, I've never worked in I.T. and
I have no professional computer training. This fix is only based on 8 years of building
and troubleshooting computers. But so far, the problems I had seem to have disappeared.
Anyways, I redid all my computers with Win2k...again! First, I made sure to remove/undo
any windows user/security/password protected data I had. I did this because I thought
it would solve the chkdsk utility errors I described in my original post. (My guess
is, this was the source of my problems) Then, I transferred that backup data to a
NTFS formatted storage drive. To format the backup storage drive I used a demo utility
called KillDisk. Here's the link:
http://www.killdisk.com/downloadfree.htm
Using Killdisk, I did a secure erase (refer to downloadable Killdisk PDF manual).
The MFT/partition table is destroyed and zeros are written to the whole drive. This
process took 4hrs for a 120gb drive, and 2.5 hours each for two 80gb drives. Kind
of long, but it basically returns the drive into a "fresh from the factory state."
Using Killdisk was a solution to the "remnant win98se fat32 boot sector" I described
in my original post.
After my data was backed up. I used KillDisk on both boot/system drives (the two
80gig drives) and used the same secure erase feature. When all the drives were erased,
I then used the Western Digital hard drive installation utility to partition and
format all drives. Afterwards, I resetup both computers by installing Win2k and retransferred
my backup data to each system. One computer has been on 24 hrs a day, the other computer
gets used daily 12hrs a day. It's been 4 weeks, and so far, there haven’t been any
problems. I can't pinpoint which part of my solution fixed the errors, but I'm glad
that they seem to be gone.
(Note: I had to use the Western Digital partition/format utility because the Win2k
partition utility during OS installation would not work right. For some reason, Win2k
could not resize the drives to smaller partitions. This might be due to using the
KillDisk utility. If you have a different brand hard drive, download a similar partition/reformat
utility from your manufacture's website and use that instead. This step might be
unnecessary if you don't use multiple partitions on a single hard drive.)
Hope This Helps,
Ed
Daly City, California
On Wednesday, January 21, 2004 at 8:58 pm, Zatoichi wrote:
>First off... I'm glad I finally found this thread after 10 days of reinstalling
windows
>2000 on 3 different systems at least 3 times each. I was getting ready to throw
all
>the hardware against the wall!
>
>Anyways, I've been experiencing very similar circumstances involving the chkdsk
utility
>of win2k. Running chkdsk on the bootable drive thru the windows desktop almost always
>concludes in some kind of "file system" problem but, according to this thread it's
>because some files are open or running off this partition/drive. However, running
>chkdsk via windows desktop on data partitions/drives would sometimes end up with
>the same "file system" problems also.
>My problems started when I redid my system after installing a used motherboard.
I
>had 2 hard drives attached to the board. Drive 1 had 2 partitions. Partition 1 was
>the boot drive, and partition 2 was the data drive. After reformatting both partitions
>of drive 1, I powered down and attached drive 2 as a slave. Drive 2 held all my
saved
>data from my previous setup and other computer (drivers, files, programs, mp3's,
>divx movies, etc.). My plan was to copy all the saved files from drive 2 and create
>a duplicate set on partition 2 of drive 1. I attempted this by right-clicking the
>mouse and using "copy" & "paste" on directories I wanted to duplicate. The directories
>varied in size but could get as large as 40gigs for one directory. During the process
>some directories & files were corrupted and subsequently lost. This got me started
>on a chkdsk frenzy. I'd run chkdsk just to run chkdsk and found that I had these
>weird file system errors on one or all drives. If one partition or drive checked
>out ok/good one time, the next day it would check out bad with a file system error.
>"What's up with that?" I've been talking to people & searching the net and this
thread
>is probably one of the best informational support groups on this problem.
>
>For the people with boot problems: a friend of mine said he experienced similar
boot
>problems and his internet research resulted in information regarding using NTFS
on
>hard drives which had previous installations of windows98se & FAT32 installed. Apparently,
>a NTFS installation will somehow detect the remnants of a fat32 boot sector resulting
>in the system not booting. Does this sound right? Is this possible? He then suggested
>to only use NTFS on brand new hard drives with no prior fat32 installations. He's
>followed this strategy and it's worked out for him. Unfortunately for me, I can't
>afford to buy a new hard drive every time I want to change an OS.
>I mentioned this situation to another friend that works in I.T. and he suggested
>using a utility that supposedly will totally wipe a drive clean called "kill fdisk"
>or something. At the place he works, he has dealt with FAT32 hard drives that were
>changed or converted to NTFS over time and, thus far they have suffered none of
the
>problems mentioned in this thread.
>(NOTE: my drives had previous FAT32 installations before changing over to win2k
&
>NTFS...coincidence?)
>
>In regards to my problem, I just found this article: Microsoft Knowledge Base Article
>- 327009 (This article was previously published under Q327009)
>Here's the link: http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;EN-US;327009
>I'm hoping this is helpful to anyone as well as me. It involves similar messages/problems
>I'm receiving so I've posted it for people. It mentions something about transferring
>a large number of files which result in security descriptor errors & file system
>corruption that chkdsk will find. These are supposedly minor index problems that
>arise when the original files have certain security features enabled by a user and
>these files get copied or transferred over to another drive. For some reason when
>the files get moved over to another system, those security features that were enabled
>via the prior computer system, are by default not enabled on the new computer they
>were transplanted to. Subsequently, this results in these errors. Does this make
>sense to anyone? Hopefully someone can shed some more light on the subject. I'm
only
>posting here so that people can build on this info and provide more insight. I really
>don't want to go back to FAT32.
>
>Hope This Helps Someone,
>
>Ed
>
>
>
|
All messages in this thread [show all]
 |  |  | Sins of NTFS (Down For The Count: Thu, Jan 22, 2004, 8:22 pm) |
| |  | Zatoichi Update: The Solution To My Problems...Maybe? (Zatoichi: Tue, Feb 24, 2004, 6:49 pm) |
| | re: (Tong Narak: Tue, Jan 25, 2005, 6:43 pm) |
| |
