What do you think is causing this?????

Jerm357 · Mar 18, 2008, 01:10 PM

What do you think is causing this?????

Ok ,Well I ve been on the rig in my sig for about a year except my hard drive came from my old build so its about 2 1/2 years old. Anyways about three weeks ago I woke up and turned my PC on and I got nothing but a black screen with with an error message saying "Load needed DLLs for kernel files missing or corrupt".

I have never seen this before so instead of trying a repair, I just formated and reinstalled Windows XP home and every thing was fine. About four or five days later I powered up the system again and it was back. The same error I got before, so this time I tried a repair and managed to get things back to normal. A few days later I boot up and the black screen with a new message saying "Windows could not start because the following file is missing or corrupt C:\windows\system32\config\system"

This time I did another format and fresh install and it lasted three more days until I got the first error message again "Load needed DLLs for kernel files missing or corrupt"
What the hell is going on here? Im just looking for some ideas of what you guys think is happening and what the cause is. Any help would be greatly appreciated. Thanks

***Zardon*** · Mar 18, 2008, 01:17 PM

the most highly likely cause of this is an imminent hard disk failure. The issue you are reporting can be caused by failing sectors causing corruption to the page file and MFT. When you initially formatted did you do a long sector format? this can sometimes remap out bad sectors on the HD. however I really would invest in a new HD, they are really inexpensive now, even for a 250 GB. then you would be a much more stable position and could even put this current drive in as a secondary to run some tests. There are some tools to test the structure and status of a drive, does it support SMART ?

Jerm357 · Mar 18, 2008, 01:28 PM

Well thats exactly what I though too. Thats why I ordered one after the third error. I just installed the new Seagate Barracuda 7200.10 yesterday and has been great so far (nice speed boost too). I just wanted to see if every one else thought this sounded like a HD problem like I did. When you say "long sector format" you mean not the quick format right if so yes I did the long one.
I also tried Seagates SeaTools diagnostic program and did its long test and it said the drive passed. Thats what kind of threw me. I guess Ill wait and see.

***Zardon*** · Mar 18, 2008, 01:29 PM

good idea, and nice choice on the drive, let us know how it goes when you get the OS reinstalled on the new HD.

Good luck.

Jerm357 · Mar 18, 2008, 03:17 PM

Is it possible that ram could cause this?

RoyBatty · Mar 18, 2008, 03:37 PM

It sounds more like HDD problem, but you can use memtest86+ to check memory.

**Vikingod** · Mar 18, 2008, 03:38 PM

My guess is, it's the HD. I recently had the same errors on a disk which was failing. I've not had any trouble with my replacement.

You could always give Memtest 86 a shot and see what it tells you about your RAM.

Jerm357 · Mar 19, 2008, 08:23 PM

Well I ran Memtest for 5 1/2 hours with 11 passes and got no errors. I take this as it must have been the hard drive. Would you guys say the same or do you think I should have run Memtest longer?

kn00tcn · Mar 25, 2008, 11:43 PM

you really want that hard drive to survive hah

what's the old drive's model #?

funny thing is just today a coworker's laptop drive randomly started failing, causing progs to crash & wipe out

today was the first time i saw seatools in action & boy was it horrible & vague

also the short test failed while some of the others passed

Judas · Mar 26, 2008, 09:24 AM

seatools i think it's excellent as it's straight to the point, and effective at it's job....

if anything shows a fail.. the drive is toast..... even if another passes.... it's cause intermitence

Jerm357 · Apr 5, 2008, 01:22 PM

Well its been about three weeks with this new HD and the problem never came back. All is well. The thing is when I ran Seatools on the old HD I ran the long test and it passed. I dont realy know how it passed becaues just switching it out, my PC has been running great ever since. The old HD would force me to format about every three days but still passed Seatools. Not realy worried about it since Im running fine now, but it kind of bugs me.

Judas · Apr 5, 2008, 02:15 PM

you have to run the short and long tests... not just one...

for example i recently had a customers HD finally up and died...

while the hardrive would pass the long test..... every time.. the short test would fail.... also running the other tests may show symptoms or signs.

shaman9876 · Apr 5, 2008, 04:05 PM

It sounds like a hard drive failure. I would recommend Spin Rite highly It has saved me many hard drives in the past. It also will tell you if there is a major problem with it. They have a great return policy if it don't work to your expectation. (Full Refund) Only down side is it is $89 US. GRC*|*Hard drive data recovery software**

Like I said it is expensive but it does work. Also It can take a long time if runs into a bad or board line sector. It will try 2000 different ways to recover a sector and move any bad sectors out of use. Which is normal. It also will refresh the magnetics of the platter and make the hard drive last longer.

shaman9876