Replies

Thanks one and all for the suggestions.

I’ve just tried Viking’s suggestion of copying (expanding) the file from the installation cd, but it don’t want to know. From the repair console I can browse c: and c:windows, but c:windowssystem32 gives me a drive ‘enumerating’ error.

I have a suspicion the drive may be on it’s way out – I’ll stuff a spare IDE drive in and see where I get to with a clean install.

FWIW I’ve had this kind of problem twice, once an unknown transient problem that an image restoration solved, and once it was a hard drive failure (which various drive diagnostics did not point out)

Good luck, Dave

Thanks for the info John, I was looking at the gui in Diskeeper 9, I am thinking you are referring to the windows defrag utility in your post. In any event, I have hibernation off and no HIBERFIL.SYS. Diskeeper reports the page file in 2 fragments.

Brings up another question though, the diskeeper gui shows a large area that is green striped and marked as “reserved system space” on my data (non-system) d: drive. The c: drive has a very small area marked with this green striping. Anyone know what it refers to?

Edit- I have answered my own question, diskeeper says- “Green-striped areas (on Windows NT, Windows 2000, Windows XP, and Windows Server 2003 systems only) show space on the volume reserved for expansion of the Master File Table.”

Thanks, David

Thanks Joe,
I will follow your advice and reduce the size to 2 gb and otherwise leave well enough alone. I have slowly learned to not fix too many things that aren’t broken on my computer!
David

Just an update- I have been able to trace the-

Error, disk, event11, The driver detected a controller error on DeviceHarddisk3D (one long string a week ago), same with Harddisk4D (one long string of them 2 weeks ago) post 621,807 above-

to a removable flash drive trying to read an unsupported memory card. Close checking of the system event log turned up an-

error, disk, event 7, DeviceHarddisk0D, Has a bad block

This is definitely my C: drive, so I will replace that drive and see if it is the culprit.

Again, thanks for everyones help, I always learn something here- David

The removable Samsung Spinpoint drive is running through a Silicon Image SI 3512 controller card that also claims to be “hot swap capable”. I guess this leaves the motherboard, an intel PS 83-BL, I looked at the manual and can’t find anything one way or another about hot swap capability, but I am beyond my knowledge here, I dont know if it is even a factor.

If it is a driver problem, would it be the controller card driver, or some driver for the mainboard, or ?

I appreciate the help with this, interesting what it leads to.

One more puzzlement- After googleing “The driver detected a controller error on DeviceHarddisk3D” (and Harddisk4D, see post 621,807 above), I saw many different Harddisk *numbers*, but always the letter D. I found no definitive answer on how to identify the physical drive, some saying D: drive, some saying it’s the drive number as identified in disk management. In my case, the C: drive is always disk 0, the D: drive is always disk 1, and removable drives are numbered according to the order they were activated.

Stuart felt both those errors were referring to my D: drive.

I am going to order a new drive to have on hand at the very least, maybe I can figure something out by disconnecting my D: drive and seeing if the computer will behave any better without it.

Thanks again everyone for your input. All suggestions are appreciated.

David

Though this rack and drive claim to support hot swapping, the following is written to the system log when it is switched off.

Event, Source, Event ID, Description

Error, PlugPlayManager, 12, The device ‘SAMSUNG HD160JJ SCSI Disk Device’ disappeared from the system without first being prepared for removal.
Warning, Ftdisk, 57, The system failed to flush data to the transaction log. Corruption may occur. (8 times)

This is after a period of drive inactivity. It doesn’t sound too good, but I don’t know if it constitutes a problem or not. As I mentioned in post #621,929 above, the property tab that optimizes drives for safe removal is greyed out for this drive. As Stuart said, the system apparently does not see this as a removable drive.

David

The rack is an I-STAR T-7 and claims to be hot swappable, the drive is a SAMSUNG HD160JJ, from the Samsung product page- “Hot-Plug & Hot-Swap capable”

Thanks, David

Thanks Stuart

Interesting… I will try in the future to not shut that drive down when windows is running, although all the documentation I have seen on this type of setup has not mentioned this. I will also run checkdisk on the D: drive. As an aside, should checkdisk be run from a command prompt versus from the windows interface (or in safe mode?)

Happy holidays

Thanks, David

Hi Bob

I thought of that too. The oldest image I have is two months, not pre-dating the start of the problem, but before it became as severe as it is now. I estimate I first noticed this happening 4-6 months ago. I have not restored from this one yet. Right now the machine is running and I am just leaving it on.

Thanks, David

Hi Stuart

On the policies tab for the removable disk drive, Write caching and Safe Removal choices are greyed out, the “enable write caching” checkbox is absent. I am looking at this from an admin account. This drive is identified as SCSI, has a SCSI Properties tab with “Disable tagged queing” and “Disable Synchronous transfers” both unchecked. I don’t know what this means, the drive is SATA.

Thanks, David

I will add that the removable disk drive is running through a controller card (not raid). Device manager shows no problem with the card. I’m *quite * sure that this problem began before I added this drive and card. I think it was one of the things that motivated me to solidify my backup regimen.

David

Thanks Joe, I will check that out.

David

Thanks Stuart

I have three hard disks- 40 gig c: drive, 160 gig d: drive for data, 160 gig removable drive with f: and g: partitions for system images and data backup. All sata, all NTFS. The removable drive is in a tray and has a switch, it is turned off except when needed for backups. There’s no option (that I know of) for “safe removal” as with a usb drive, I just wait until the drive activity light is off to switch it off, or switch it off after shutdown. I do use a flash drive occasionally, have it set for safe removal, and use the tray icon to remove.

That being said, one of my event errors is- Error, PlugPlayManager, Event 12, The device ‘SAMSUNG HD160JJ SCSI Disk Device’ (SCSIDisk&Ven_SAMSUNG&Prod_HD160JJ&Rev_WU105&28c68dfa&0&000) disappeared from the system without first being prepared for removal. (this is the removable disk drive)

This error seems to occur with the ftdisk error in my first post, and sometimes with a disk error, event 15, The device, DeviceHarddisk2D, is not ready for access yet. (or similar)

Thanks, David

Thanks for your response

There are some errors and warnings on the system page of the event viewer. The most common ones are-

Warning, ftdisk, event 57, The system failed to flush data to the transaction log, corruption may occur (a group of several today, and a couple every few to 10 days going back as far as the log goes, about a month)

Error, Service Control Manager, event 7000, The UDNT service failed to start due to: The system cannot find the device specified (a few times a day, most days)

Error, disk, event 11, The driver detected a controller error on DeviceHarddisk3D (one long string a week ago), same with Harddisk4D (one long string of them 2 weeks ago)

There are a few others intermittently about a browser not finding the network, or my removable hard drive being turned off, a couple that look network related (2 machines on a home wireless network), an occasional printer error.

The application page has a very occasional- Warning, userenv, event 1517, Windows saved user OWNER-C5BD57BEAOwner registry while an application or service was still using the registry during log off. The memory used by the user’s registry has not been freed. The registry will be unloaded when it is no longer in use.

Don’t know if this helps or not

Thanks, David

Not sure what is up, but checking a project I am working on, the audacity files are about 1.21 gig and the exported .wav is 811 meg. In preferences-quality, my sample rate is 44,100 Hz and Sample Format is 24 bit. On the File Formats tab- Uncompressed Output, I am using- Wav (Microsoft 16 bit PCM). I use winamp as a player, but that shouldn’t matter. You should be able to simply export an audacity project, play it (wav or mp3 or ogg), re-import to audacity, edit away and play from there as well. I’d say check your output format, beyond that I dont know.

Dave