NTFS Dynamic Disk problems
Monday, August 15, 2005 at 8:41 am
Windows XP Annoyances Discussion Forum
Posted by JASC^
(24 messages posted)
Hello, I think my problem fits best on this thread:
I'm a subscriber to PC Magazine's daily tip e-mailing, and I read the article on
optimizing Windows XP Disk Performance http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,1895,1845189,00.asp).
I followed the instructions very, very carefully. I opened the disk management console,
and changed my only hard drive to be a dynamic disk on my Windows XP OS. After the
changing process, 8MB of unallocated space appeared on the disk management console.
I allocated it into my second hard drive partition (D), as guided on the article.
Nevertheless, a new mysterious partition, G (in addition to my boot-partition C and
second partition D) appeared. I couldn’t open this new partition, since Windows claimed
it was not formatted. I didn’t format it. The “properties” window claimed its file
system to be RAW – not NTFS, as my other partitions were. It claimed that the partition
held no data – 0 bytes.
I followed PC Magazine’s instructions, or more appropriately, got reminded to check
the hard drive for errors – Windows was reporting that one of my programs currently
running had corrupted files in its folder and I should run chkdsk. I checked both
options (the first concerning automatic fixing and the second that attempts scan
and recovery of bad sectors), and Windows wanted to restart, so that I could also
check the files in use. That’s what I did, but I never got so far. At the first splash
screen of Windows loading, the computer restarted. It gave me five options – to start
windows normally, in safe mode, in safe mode with networking or the command prompt,
or revert to the last settings that worked. None of these did any good, the computer
kept rebooting after the splash screen of WinXP had appeared. When attempting to
load to safe mode, it loaded a bunch of text onto the screen, and it was loading
something, but then restarted.
Then I tried something else – before the five options appeared, I opened the BIOS,
and changed the primary booting source from the floppy drive to my cd drive. Then
I saved the changes and exited BIOS, and after it restarted due to BIOS changes,
I inserted the WinXP Professional cd so that it would boot from it. I opened the
Windows setup, and I took the option to repair an existing Windows installation with
the recovery console. I ran chkdsk in the recovery console to both C and D, as the
one I earlier scheduled at restart never begun, because the computer restarted before
Windows got to it. It complained something about the file system (I cannot recall),
but ran anyway -- both partitions claimed to have one or more problems on the disk.
I ran them once more, and exited the recovery console, after which Windows XP booted
normally. I worked on it normally – installed a new program and did text processing.
But the next day when I opened my computer again, the same boot problem appeared.
I did the same thing as I did earlier, and the computer booted to windows again.
But this time my SoundBlaster Live! sound card didn’t produce any sound – instead
all I heard was beeps from the internal system beeper. I couldn’t see any start menu,
either, and Windows Media Player refused to open due to lack of memory, as it told
me in an error message. Disk manager was unable to work, and System Restore refused
to work as well, although I restarted the computer (this time with no boot problems)
as it told me to do. I tried to restart the display theme and reset taskbar settings
to regain the taskbar & start menu, without success. There was a faint bar on the
bottom of the screen, I tried to drag it up, but it didn’t respond to my dragging.
I right-clicked on the bar and got the normal menu that you’d get when right-clicking
on the taskbar. I checked Toolbars -> Desktop, and I could now see the start menu,
but the taskbar wasn’t operating as it should, but showing the Desktop’s contents.
Undoing the checking just made the start menu re-disappear. In addition, my PCI Wireless
internet card wasn’t recognized, although it showed to be present in the device manager,
and so I couldn’t connect to my broadband Wi-Fi 802.11g network. Items didn’t always
open up properties-boxes, things didn’t appear properly, it felt, and still feels,
as if the whole computer was coming down.
To ease matters, I’ll attach my system specs to the bottom.
System Specs:
- Intel Pentium 4 with HyperThreading @ 3.0GHz.
- 1024MB RAM
- Maxtor 6Y160M0 160GB S-ATA Hard Drive, 4 months old
- ATI (Club 3d) Radeon 9800 Pro 256MB
- SoundBlaster Live! audio card
- Intel D865PERL Motherboard
- Windows XP Professional
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All messages in this thread [show all]
 |  | | |  | NTFS Dynamic Disk problems (JASC^: Mon, Aug 15, 2005, 8:41 am) |
| |  | Sins of NTFS (Down For The Count: Thu, Jan 22, 2004, 8:22 pm) |
|  | re: (Tong Narak: Tue, Jan 25, 2005, 6:43 pm) |
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