harddisk problem

[Roberti]

hello,

I've got a strange problem. one day I booted my computer and in windows i tried to acces my D: drive but all my directory names where renamed, and my file names, I coulden't open any directory or file. I formatted my drive, not a quick format. after the format I placed some new files on them, and the next day they where all renamed, and so on. I thecked for a virus but nothing, the drive had no bad sectors, and scandisk gives no errors.

anybody an idea? thanx in advance

 

[AidanEnos]

Are you saying the names are changed in explorer or at the dos prompt?

Do your file names look like this?

GLOBAL~1 <DIR>
SIERRA <DIR>
LIPREFS JS
WOOF EXE
MYMUSI~1 <DIR>
$$NN$$~1 OLD
NORTVDU <DIR>
WINDOW~1 <DIR>
WFCNAME INI
INSTALL LOG
MYDOWN~1 <DIR>
COMLOG TXT
AUTOEXEC 001

Is it the ~ in the name or the funky extensions like autoexec.001 - or is it something different?

AidanEnos

 

[Roberti]

hello AidanEnos,

it's in explorer, but the filenames are renamed to completly different names, some with special characters that aren't allowed by windows 98se. example: the directory 'website' was turned into 'website'. stuff like that. or the directory 'Jazpiper' turned into 'Jazpepr'.

thanx for the reply

 

[edfair]

Possible memory problem , IDE controller problem, or hard drive problem. You might reseat the ribbon cables to the hard drive. Appears to be dropping bits on the transfer in or out. Would be nice to pin down which direction by putting the drive in another machine and looking at the directory. Ed Fair
efair@atlnet.com

Any advice I give is my best judgement based on my interpretation of the facts you supply.

Help increase my knowledge by providing some feedback, good or bad, on any advice I have given.

 

[AidanEnos]

I'd check the temp of the computer and change the ribbon cables - ed's right you are simply losing bits and it's AMAZING that your computer boots at all!

If you are running too hot, if you HDD is dying or you have burned some leaks in your cables (like letting them rest against a fan) or creased them.

Ribbons are cheap, and if you deal with the same comp place on a regular basis they'll prolly give 'em to ya cheap!

 

[Roberti]

Hello,

first of all, thanx for the reply's.I checked the ribbons, and reconnected them but that didn't help, and the temp is oke. it's not my boot drive, that is a physical different drive. i used this drive to backup important files and programs.the other drive has no problems, so i don't think it's the ide controller. i downloaded some diagnostic tool from the manufacturers site but it says that the disk is in perfect state. i also removed the dos partition with fdisk and after reboot made a new one, but it didn't help.
anybody has any idea? i'm not sure what to do next?

thanx

 

[edfair]

Next step is the failing drive alone , fdisk ,partition, and format. Then check to see if you can write to it and get it back. Or possibly split the drives to separate channels.
Or try on another machine.
Tis a matter of elimination. No magic, just swapping things around till they make sense. Ed Fair
efair@atlnet.com

Any advice I give is my best judgement based on my interpretation of the facts you supply.

Help increase my knowledge by providing some feedback, good or bad, on any advice I have given.

 

[Roberti]

i found the problem. somebody asked me if recently overclocked my system, wich i did PIII-450 to PIII-517.he said that the front side bus was set to high and therefore the computer was dropping bits. so i decreased the speed to 495 Mhz, formatted the drive, copied something to the drive, rebooted and it was still oke, nothing was renamed.
thanx for the help.

bye

 

[thadwalt]

Check for a virus in the bios.