Hard Disk Trouble - WinXP bluescreen

Khalim

Hi all,

I have a problem starting up my pc.

It comes up with the following message on a blue screen:
Windows has encountered a problem and cannot start. If this is the first time you have seen this warning, restart your computer.
(Something to that effect i think)

the technical lines are:
*** stop: 0x00000024 (0x001902FA,0xF78FEB70,0xF78FE870,0xF709C83D)

ntfs.sys - Address F709C83D base at F708B000, Datestamp 3d6de5c1

Can someone please tell me what does this mean?

I believe that my hard disk has gone and died, and after replacing it, everything seems to work fine, but I would like to confirm what the actual problem is.

Thank you. (Sorry for the poor english)

Khannie

Yup, probably a broken hard disk. I believe there's a scandisk in the windows installer that will check the disc for you though.

Could be just a corrupted installation or a virus or something else. Worth making sure that the hard drive is /actually/ broken before throwing it out.

Kevok

It looks like your filesystem was corrupted, maybe a hard boot while the OS was writing to the disk.

Checked the Microsoft site and came accross this: http://support.microsoft.com/?kbid=228888

It should help in solving your problem.

Ruu_Old

dont think its a broken hard disk, i had the exact same message a few weeks ago when putting in a new hard drive. I re-installed windows and it was fine after that, i put it down to a corrupt file system

Khalim

first of all, thanks for the assist. more details on the problem.

chronologically it happened like this:

1) Windows wouldnt start - a selection screen came up to select start windows normally, last known settings or safe mode. i tried all of them, one by one and i still got back to this selection screen.

2) so i figured something was up with my windows installation, i got my windows xp cd out and started it up to try and repair my windows installation. it was at this time i got the blue screen message.

3) i then tried to format the hard disk by going through option install windows.
it brings me back to the same blue screen message.

4) giving up, i went out and bought a new hard disk. installed windows and all the requisite software, and everything works fine. but, when i connected the old hard disk again, the pc would just loop when starting up. after disconnecting the old hard disk, the machine started up okay. A message came up in Windows XP stating that the pc has recovered from a serious error, and the details are exactly as the blue screen message.

the old hard disk was a serial-ata 120 gb partitioned into 2 partitions, 30GB for Windows and the balance for other files.

i have looked up the support page, and it seems that the corrupt file system might be causing the problem. i'll try the Using Recovery Console on a Single Drive Computer method as i can't try any other options.

will update as soon as i try it.

zod

stick in the winxp cd and try a repair

Nukem

Had the same prob a few weeks ago and i though it was the IDE controller due to the CD/DVD acing up as well but found it was the HDD,put a new one in and away she went first time. Tried the XP recovery and nada........hope you have better luck
Nukem