[Kieran]

Hi all, yet more questions. When my windows 2k shuts down it seems really fast, when the PC powers down the Hard disk light is still on and i get a small clunk from my hard disk , i didnt notice this on Windows 98. A couple of times when i've restarted the PC i've had a blue screen error message, or the system files on the hard diisk can't be found, however all i normally need do is to reboot the machine and it works ok. Any ideas on why and if W2K should shut down that fast. It goes thru the normal screen of saying saving personal settings and then windows is shutting down, but all this takes only a few seconds once the desktop disappears.
regards
Kieran

[JP-]

Sometimes it shutsdown is a few seconds, other times it can take up a bit longer (for me anyway) it seems to depend on how much its been used in that session. You really shouldnt be getting blue screens though whats the error message you get?

[Kieran]

One of them said something about not finding a file or something..i can't remember to be honest. However over the past couple of weeks i've intermittantly had disk errors flagged up on the event manager, and i've heard the Hard Disk spin down and spin up spuriously accompanied by some horrible clunks. Yesterday was a nightmare , i couldn't even boot, and my disk wasn't recognised at all, then suddenly it was fine!!!
What i did was to check all my ide cable connections, and although they all felt ok, i gave them a bit of a push. Then i unloaded the VIA supplied IDE controller software, and loaded the M/soft one, and it ran virtually all day with no problems. I downloaded the SP2 full version from M/Soft (106 meg..on a dial up 56k modem .i went to bed and left it to get on with it). I did get a blue screen saying the disk was corrupt when i tried to install that..but i had magic folders active which hides folders, i removed the hidden folder, and ran it again, this time it installed with no problems at all. I have checked my disk with different utilities, and they all say my disk is fine, so the problem with the disk spinning down could have been a driver issue, since it only began to occur when i installed the VIA 4 in 1 ver 4.31 chipset drivers. I've now installed the 4.32 ones, but it automatically skips the IDE controller stuff, only installing the AGP driver so my IDE drivers are now MSoft ones courtesy of the full SP2 update (i only had the small (10 meg)'intelligent' one while all this crap was going on.
So now i wait and see, but so far its looking good. If the problem continues then i'm gonna wipe my h/d and takeit from there , using the full SP2 straight after W2K has gone on.

[Atreyu]

To be honest with you, it sounds like youre hard drive is dying. I would back that sucker up immediately and replace it. One of my hard drives in my web server was doing exactly what you describe.. fortunately with my setup, my hard drive coulda caught fire and I wouldnt have lost any data. Anyways, hard drives **should** really only have that beautiful little high pitched hum as they spin, and the normal scratches as they read and write. When you start hearing clunking sounds, spin-ups and stops, and you are getting disk error messages... well... I would say it's time to replace. The spin-ups **could** be a result of your power settings.. if you have the hard drives set to "turn off" after a certain amount of time. Have you tried that?

[Kieran]

I ran a diagnostic utility by Maxtor, which if all runs well, is the same as the factory certification (the drive is only 10 months old). I ran the long advanced burn in test, which took 3 hours, and it reported the drive as ok. I am wondering if it has something to do with the VIA 4.31 drivers i loaded (which i have now upgraded) because the problem first reared its ugly head the very instant i installed them and rebooted.
I am in a quandry as to what to do now really, whether reformat and reload w2k, or reload w98 or just to wait and see, since most of the time it behaves itself.... don't know at the moment, but the drive is backed up in case the unspeakabe happens

[AndyFair]

I would say that, if you have the drive backed up, reinstalling Win2k couldn't do much harm.
VIA's 3-in-1 drivers are notoriously buggy, and installing the newest version isn't always the best idea - new versions seem to introduce more bugs than they fix...having said that, the latest drivers do seem to be fairly stable.

Does your mobo have ATA100 channels? If so, the VIA drivers don't touch these, they're controlled by Promise/Highpoint drivers (depending on your mobo make).

In summary: reinstall Win2k, see how you go, and keep running chkdsk!

Rgds
Andy

[Preacher]

[Cynan]

There was an issue with using VIA 686B southbrigde in UDMA mode and 2K. The cache wondered be flushed properly while shutting down and so, disk errors would pop up. It was suggested that you use the highpoint controller (if there is one on your board).

[Mr.Guvernment]

Your hard drive is dead, burry it and move on, mine just died, same thing, spin up and down, sounds like the head is grinding into the disk (i had a wave recording of it, iwill try to find it), it officially died last night, so don't waste your time hoping, the maxtor utility won't tell u anything really, as long as it can 'read' the drive, then it thinks it is fine. Go for a new drive.