Here is strange one re: harddrive and hibernation scare: I closed the lid on my newly refurbished TR3 (replaced the harddrive/cleaned thefan) which had been running great for about 3 weeks. I had edited powerpanel to hibernate on lid close. The next morning I opened the lid, pressed the on button, and instead of seeing a hibernate restore progress bar i got “OS not found” and heard the hardrive clicking around in circles. Slightly panicked (but not to much, as I have been thru this so many times now with TRs) I put in Disk 1 of the Sony Recovery Disks. I got the message I expected: Hardware not found, check connections. Thinking o crap, there goes another cheesy toshiba drive, I rebooted one more time for luck without the recovery disk and lo and behold the machine booted fine out of hibernation mode.
So, wondering what could have caused this and remembering problems years ago with another new TR3 and hibernation (does anyone else recall this?) I did a check for viruses and malware using norton, spybot, and adaware. the only think i found was a comet tracker installed when my wife put on a screensaver a few days ago. So i cleaned all that up and everything was working except the network. Looking at ipconfig I saw a strange entry instead of my exected network connection:
169.254.69.250
autoconfiguration IP address
I have no idea where that came from, but after doing a /release and /renew all was fine with the network.
I am doing a backup now and hoping that after that completes I can reboot again normally. The hd is dead silent and working well. Everything seems normal.
IIRC those “autoconfig” IP addresses are ones the OS pretty much makes up of the top of its head when it fails to get one from DHCP and you see that “network has limited connectivity” icon.
[quote author=“pugwash75”]IIRC those “autoconfig” IP addresses are ones the OS pretty much makes up of the top of its head when it fails to get one from DHCP and you see that “network has limited connectivity” icon.
I doubt it’s related to your disk problem.
Chris
thanks for explaination on that! now at least i know what that means. the problem happened again and the solution was the same, put in the SONY VIAO Rescue disk 1 and try and boot on that a few times until the HD finally responded. I just did a complete image backup using ATI and now considering just wiping the drive clean and restoring the image, although I am not sure that would help if there is something on the disk causing this. Is there a tool to check for disk problems? I have Partition Magic, Diskeeper Pro, etc. but they all say the drive is fine… I accidently posted this prob in another thread and some suggested a flakey IDE controller, as perhaps the running the CDROM was kicking things back in place. I wonder if there is a test for the IDE controller as well, although if that was bad I guess the TR would be boat-anchor. Well, just waiting for another crash now…
jigs
Pugwash…do you know what a ping of death is. my router gets those and i assume stops them, but i notice that in my p2p program azuereus, there is a drop in up/down right around those times. is that connected to anything? thx,
jigs
It was me that suggested the IDE controller, dimmy. It is very unlikely that there is a problem with the disk in terms of bad sectors etc, and it’s only really that which programs suck as disk keeper and scandisk will detect.The “operating system not found” message appears because the BIOS cannot locate the Master Boot Record - this is a tiny area of the disk and the very first place that the boot loader looks at. Either:
1. You have a flakey bad sector in the MBR. This is really very unlikely, mostly because bad sectors don’t generally start and stop working randomly but also because once you’ve managed to boot, a rigorous disk checker doesn’t pick it up. Usually when you’ve got damage in one place on the disk you’ve got it in at least a few surrounding areas.
2. When your computer first requests data from the disk, it doesn’t get anything. This means that something between the computer and the disk surface is not responding properly, and the main things in here are the IDE controller, the cabling and the circuitry on the disk itself. This is my favourite idea.
It’s important that this “it works after I use the CD” diagnosis is correct. How many times have you tried _without_ the CD? You implied before that it was guaranteed to work after you used the recovery CD but your previous post says “boot on that a few times” - is it possible that the CD isn’t actually causing it to start working again?
On the other topic - Ping of Death is (I believe) a very large PING packet which used to blue-screen NT computers. I don’t think it does it any more on XP and I imagine your router is just blocking them as a precaution. Not sure what effect it’s having on your P2P, but I am positive that the effect it’s having on your hard disk problems is zero.
Chris, thanks so much for your careful diagnosis! U are correct, it’s just a coicendence about the boot CD, i got the machine to boot WITHOUT it. so ur suggestion #2 seems very reasonable. Hmmm…I have had trouble with this box before - there is a long thread here about the trouble caused by the wireless card popping it’s support mount and causing another error. I had the machine apart then and fixed that. So do I take it apart again and hope for a loose HD connection? I was not the one who replaced that last month, a service tech here in nepal put the new one in. I guess there is also the chance that the control circutry in the drive is bad? How can i isolate this one? I guess try another fresh drive, but this one had to imported from singapore, and that took over a week. I have a 30 gig ipod and I was thinking that uses the same drive/compatible drive? I never use the big ipod anymore now that i have a shuffle. it’s sitting in the desk collecting dust. But before I tear apart all these gizmos, do u know of a better test? Frustrating this does seem to be a pure hardware problem, no indication in the event log or anything else…the box just dies. thanks again for ur support.
jigs
ps. About the MBR, is there a way to check that, or I guess it’s just read and works, or not read and fails!?! I’d like to blame the new version of Diskeeper, but I’ve already blamed so many other things (hibernation, etc.). But maybe a reformat just to see?
I’m not very sure what to suggest. I would suggest pulling the lid off and poking at the cables, but in reality that’s unlikely to help because if the cables were badly connected I’d expect the thing to misbehave sometimes _after_ it’s booted too, and you say it never does.
I don’t think the wireless card popping out has anything to do with it either. You’re desperate for it to be a network problem, aren’t ya?
As the CD drive always works, I am tempted to say that I think the problem is with your hard disk itself. Is it Toshiba or Hitachi? Is it under warranty? I had a hard disk once which would spin up far too slowly as the motor was dying - it took two reboots before the drive was running fast enough for the operating system to recognise it was there. Do you find it is much more reliable starting from “warm” restarts than cold ones?
Chris, ya got a free motorbike ride the next time u are in nepal. we have nice 500cc royal enfields here. Ride a bit of history. yada yada. Anyway, it DOES fail not only reboot. I’ll just let it sit and and it will freeze up anywhere within 1 to 12 hours later. About the network, i just gave the wireless example of a bad connection :wink: in this tr. I used to have a problem connecting to wireless reliably. then i fixed that. then i’ve been in nepal ever since where wireless connections hardly exists. anyway, back to the connections: will a harddrive behave this way. I’ve only seen them die and stay dead. never on again off again like this one…
jigs
ps. i have the toshiba mk4004gah in this one..hmmm what about the driver? anywat, this baby is always warm these days. i don’t let it cool down much, but the failure has happened when both hot and cold.
wow, a real bike. the 500cc is the biggest u can ride here, and most enfielders have the 350 like i do. not that anyone can get over 90 on these roads, so i guess it does not matter much. the general population rides 125s and maybe a 180cc kawasaki.
i’ll take it apart later and try. i suppose the ide controller is just a chip soldered to the motherboard eh. i wish there was a trace tool to try and see what happens, but if the drive disappears i guess there is nothing a tool can trace…arg…
Well, I took it all apart, reseated everything, and it worked well for a day and then same thing: OS not found. But this time on the very first reboot it came up fine. Again, it’s crashing with this error message but now booting fine. It’s been up now for over 10 days however without a crash. This is still strange, and now I can’t really trust the thing. I just know with my hardware luck it wil crash the next time I am working with in a client’s office. They think “oh wow, he’s cool look at that small shiny silver laptop” then they will think “what a dodo, his harddrive crashed.”
But seriously, as serious as I can possibly get over something so stupid as a computer, is I think the fan must be dead cause this thing still overheats. I forgot about this anomoly the other day and closed the lid, it was distracting me from the TV, and as I have hibernation turned off it was running for about 4 hours with the lid down and defragging the hard drive. Well, it was hot enough to fry an egg by the time I realized what was going on. But at least it can still find the OS….
jigs
[quote author=“pugwash75”]Does it make a funny noise at all? The HD I had that only worked after a few reboots made a heck of a noise. I think one of the bearings was broken.
Clients? I thought you were a cartoonist?
Chris
Maybe he sits in their offices and draws them. You know cartoon like.
“So Dude, you like Dune Buggies? Everyone likes Dune buggies”
It might be a bumb disk motor - not spinning up quickly enough, or gummy bearings, or a head actuator that doesn’t home correctly, or some such thing. In other words, it’s probably a bad disk drive. Not in the sense of bad magnetics, but in the sense of the motors and actuators.
It is very unlikely that there is a problem with the disk in terms of bad sectors etc, and it’s only really that which programs suck as disk keeper and scandisk will detect.The “operating system not found” message appears because the BIOS cannot locate the Master Boot Record - this is a tiny area of the disk and the very first place that the boot loader looks at. Either:
