Re: Bad Sectors - Now Warning from XP!
From: Mike Hall (mike.hall.mail_at_sympatico.ca)
Date: 11/29/04
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Date: Sun, 28 Nov 2004 19:17:36 -0500
"William B. Lurie" <billurie@nospam.org> wrote in message
news:O7ofpjZ1EHA.3588@TK2MSFTNGP14.phx.gbl...
> Sort of bearing on this same subject, I'd extend it a bit, to ask why,
> since XP 'knows' there are bad sectors, and is really wonderfully
> smart, couldn't it just go ahead and fix them?
>
> Personally, I'm a little old-fashioned. It was less than 20
> years ago that, when you bought a PC, a hard-disk drive was
> an expensive 'optional extra'.... and I finally sprung for one.
> It had a capacity of TEN MEGABYTES! Today's ubiquitous drives have
> a thousand times as much storage, and more. But I'm awfully nervous
> about the actual reliability of these monsters. Statistically, it
> doesn't take much of an imperfection to turn into 'bad sectors'.
> Bill Lurie
>
> Moshup Trail wrote:
>> My mother brought her PC to me at Thanksgiving. It was displaying a
>> number
>> of problems. When trying to run a program she got missing DLL errors.
>> When
>> trying to upgrade to SP2 the download seemed to be corrupt and we kept
>> getting "cannot copy file" errors during the backup phase. Also, it
>> seemed
>> to be running very slowly. When we tried to run the disk defragger
>> utility
>> it quit very quickly with no explanation, and no defrag.
>>
>> After many hours I finally began to realize that all these problems
>> pointed
>> to likely bad sectors on the HD. So I ran the chkdsk utility in the
>> repair
>> mode and it found numerous bad sectors on the HD and told me it was
>> repairing each one.
>>
>> My questions: 1. If bad sectors are so bad (and they are!) why doesn't
>> XP
>> tell you sooner that you have a problem? There was almost no warning
>> about
>> this except the "cannot copy file" errors. Yet XP had many opportunities
>> to
>> let us know...
>>
>> 2. Also, when chkdsk said it was "repairing" sectors, did it REALLY
>> restore
>> the data? Or did it just mark the sector bad and replace it?
>>
>> 3. This is the second PC she's had this problem with (it's a Dell). I am
>> using her first PC that had the problem - an old IBM PC 1410 and the HD
>> has
>> not deteriorated. Could she be doing something that would cause it, or
>> taking thePC to places that would cause "bad sectors"?
>>
>>
A few bad sectors never hurt anybody.. the bad sectors would not necessarily
have been responsible for the file errors.. if XP was to continuously check
the drive for bad sectors, you would not be able to do anything on it as
chkdsk is a very intensive function.. chkdsk marks the bad sector and moves
the data elsewhere..
SP2 installs ok onto a computer that is working as it should.. that is to
say, there are no errors.. missing DLLs are usually down to the user
'deleting' programs instead of using the ADD/REMOVE function..
Two pieces of advice.. #1. Train your mother in the correct way to remove
unwanted software.. #2. Look at this website..
http://www3.telus.net/dandemar/spackins.htm
- Next message: Ken Blake: "Re: XP still available (new) without SP2?"
- Previous message: Rick \: "Re: XP Home Activation"
- In reply to: William B. Lurie: "Re: Bad Sectors - Now Warning from XP!"
- Next in thread: Bruce Chambers: "Re: Bad Sectors - Now Warning from XP!"
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