| Forum Home | ||||
| Press F1 | ||||
| Thread ID: 89385 | 2008-04-29 06:10:00 | Windows Missing? | cold_fusion (6537) | Press F1 |
| Post ID | Timestamp | Content | User | ||
| 663870 | 2008-04-29 06:10:00 | Hi, I have an interesting one for you. I built a computer for a friend of my family and it has turned a bit pear shaped, the first problem to occur a few month after building it was a missing .dll file that cause windows to hang at the log in screen. I had to resort to a windows re-install to get it working again. This should have set off alarm bells but as there was a power cut the night it happened I put it down to that. Last week another issue popped up, windows won't boot and gives the error "missing hal.dll file" so I tried to follow microsofts help site and using the recovery console to restore the file. But! The entire Windows folder is gone, not hidden, but gone. I ran chkdsk (which took a very long time) and the contents of the windows folder showed up in found.000 and found.001 in C drive. Any ideas what would cause such corruption on data? (that my guess as to what happened). I ran memtest86+ and the ram is fine, the only thing I can think of is perhaps it's a dodgey motherboard, its an ASUS M2N-MX SE, the only other clue I have is that the integrated GPU gives this message on posting "engineering release - not for production use". Maybe they rushed the product out and didn't test it properly? Any insight would be great, I am strongly considering getting another motherboard but I would like some opinions first, Many thanks. |
cold_fusion (6537) | ||
| 663871 | 2008-04-29 07:12:00 | Do a hard drive diagnostic. | wratterus (105) | ||
| 663872 | 2008-04-29 07:17:00 | That could be caused by a faulty drive, Sectors on the drive failing and losing data. If you want to test the drive download HDD Regenerator (www.dposoft.net), load it and make the bootable CD, and let it run ( takes a while) if it locates any bad sectors consider having the drive replaced. As for the "engineering release - not for production use", that usually it means that it is a test run build or a pre-release for testing and reviewing. Looks like someone screwed up someplace - again possible reason for failures, warranty claim. |
wainuitech (129) | ||
| 663873 | 2008-04-29 10:09:00 | Thanks for the replies, I am running HDD Regenerator now. I see what you mean when you said it would take a while! So far no bad sectors. |
cold_fusion (6537) | ||
| 663874 | 2008-04-30 08:28:00 | Ok, so HDD Regenerator finished without finding any bad sectors. Do you guys think that the motherboard is most likely at fault? |
cold_fusion (6537) | ||
| 663875 | 2008-04-30 09:14:00 | Okay - If the drive tests as Ok, then try this - Click on start/run type in eventvwr, open the log files, especially the application and System Logs, look through them, and locate any error messages, look to see if there is an error messages that are common, at the time the PC may have been playing up. If you find any that repeat, double click the error to fully expand it, copy /paste the complete message back here. In the error message will be a link to Microsoft relating to the error - Sometimes :rolleyes: and I'm being sarcastic here, they actually give a helpful answer to the problem, or at least give a possible hint as to whats wrong. Sometimes its a process of elimination to locate the failing part, So Far - RAM - OK HD - OK |
wainuitech (129) | ||
| 663876 | 2008-04-30 10:04:00 | wainuitech, thanks for the reply. I have yet to re-install windows on it, so at the moment I can access the data on the drive, but only by a linux live cd. Is the eventvwr log stored somewhere as a text file that I could read? |
cold_fusion (6537) | ||
| 663877 | 2008-04-30 11:16:00 | Okay - never tried reading them out side of windows, but just looked at MS and they say you can - heres how to extract them (support.microsoft.com) I did look at this PC and located the event Viewer logs. By default, Event Viewer log files use the .evt extension and are located in the following folder: %SystemRoot%\System32\Config According to MS Here is how to read tehm (support.microsoft.com). I'll look at this tomorrow - watching Terminator 3 at the moment :D |
wainuitech (129) | ||
| 1 | |||||