wd3200bpvt causes blue screen, strange fault

[ritch50]

Got the above hard drive in a netbook, get a blue screen however I boot.

Removed the drive and connected via USB temporarily to a 2nd desktop, basically to check reading the drive.
Detects the drive then blue screens and shuts down

Any ideas????

Cheers, Ritch

[labtech]

http://hddguru.com/software/2005.10.02-MHDD/

and use search function in hddguru for various posts to get an idea from other people.

[Vulcan]

@ritch50,

a) What is your customer's aim - fix the drive (data is unimportant) or recover the data?

b) If the aim is to recover the data, how important is that data?

c) What's the history (depending on the customer's memory, of course)? All OK then suddenly wouldn't boot, or some kind of gradual degradation over a period of time, or sudden power loss then this behaviour started, or ... ?

d) In some cases, the info on the blue screen itself may give a hint as to the area of the problem - can you take a photo of that?

Personally, my approach for diagnosis would depend on the answers to those questions.

[ritch50]

Thanks for the replies.


I tried MHDD, scans the drive fine. No bad sectors or even slow etc etc.

The laptop originally came in as standard not booting through to windows - this is where I am still at.

a) What is your customer's aim - fix the drive (data is unimportant) or recover the data?

Not sure yet, as I said was just looking at repairing windows etc to get it booting through. (No recovery disks)
We dont just reinstall without recovery disk / partition.


b) If the aim is to recover the data, how important is that data?

see above

c) What's the history (depending on the customer's memory, of course)? All OK then suddenly wouldn't boot, or some kind of gradual degradation over a period of time, or sudden power loss then this behaviour started, or ... ?

worked in the evening, next day no boot

d) In some cases, the info on the blue screen itself may give a hint as to the area of the problem - can you take a photo of that?

generic page fault in customer's netbook, when I plug into a second computer running windows (like I say mhdd in dos ok) blue screens with an error saying something like attempted to write to a non-writable device?

I've never had this before in 20 years experience. Its the fact that it causes a 2nd PC to bomb out instantly that has me baffled.

Cheers, Ritch!

[labtech]

Perhaps one of the boot files are damaged, perhaps something else.

Still have not replied on the BSOD code as Vulcan inquired about. That could provide a bit of guidance.

[Vulcan]

@labtech,

Indeed

@ritch50,

Not enough info yet to be confident either way, but one of my suspicions is filesystem metadata corruption (hence why the same behaviour happens, even when Windows tries to simply mount that filesystem on another PC). I've seen this a couple of times before. There may be clues for or against that possibility in the details on the blue screen which is why I asked of you could take a photo (sometimes it takes more in-depth analysis of the Windows mini-dump file to get a better understanding, but a photo of the blue screen is where I would start).

As I said before, if I was being asked to look at the drive then my next steps would depend on the customer's answers to previous questions. No point in spending lots of time, if the customer doesn't need the data.

P.S. While waiting for the customer to explain what they want, can you please include the current full SMART data for the drive (including raw values), in your next reply. I'm not expecting to see signs of a problem, but it makes sense to have a look.

[ritch50]

Thanks for the replies

The BSOD simply says:

PAGE FAULT IN NON PAGED AREA

(The usual generic message) followed by

STOP 0x00000050 (0xAA9C0000,0x00000000,0x854451D3,0x00000000)

--------------------

The smart values are:

val worst raw
read error rate: 200 200 0
spin up time: 137 131 2100
spin up times: 97 97 3496
reallocated secs:200 200 0
seek error: 200 200 0
power on time: 97 97 2555
spin up retries: 100 100 0
calibration: 100 100 0
start / stop: 99 99 1301
unknown: 1 1 1301
power off retract:200 200 463
load/unload cyc.:165 165 10703
hda temp: 124 94 19
realocate event: 200 200 0
curr. pending sect:200 200 0
offline scan unc: 100 253 0
ultra ata crc err: 200 200 0
write error rate: 200 200 0


I was thinking maybe to run a scan using a linux box we have here to check for errors etc
what do you think?

Cheers, Ritch

[labtech]

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/329293

Did that happen? About the Win updates?

[Vulcan]

@ritch50,

Unfortunately the SMART utility which you used didn't include the attribute number in the output, nor did it include the threshold value. Of course we know many of the attributes by name, but the value of "unknown" in your SMART output is worryingly low. Can't say more without the missing attribute number (hope we can find some info on it) & its threshold value.

Regarding your suggestion - personally I would not "run a scan using a linux box" at this stage. As I said before, I would only start to do anything after I had received and considered the customer's answers to my original questions (a) & (b), and confirmed that any plan was justified by their answers.

[fzabkar]

Unfortunately the SMART utility which you used didn't include the attribute number in the output, nor did it include the threshold value. Of course we know many of the attributes by name, but the value of "unknown" in your SMART output is worryingly low. Can't say more without the missing attribute number ...

Here is an example for the same drive:
http://www.tomshardware.com/forum/29794 ... error-rate

0A 100 100 __0 000000000000 Spin Retry Count
0B 100 100 __0 000000000000 Recalibration Retries
0C 100 100 __0 000000000235 Power Cycle Count
BF __1 __1 __0 000000000093 G-Sense Error Rate
C0 200 200 __0 00000000000C Power-off Retract Count
C1 196 196 __0 000000002FA5 Load/Unload Cycle Count

It appears that the OP's Power Cycle Count and the G-Sense Error Rate are identical, suggesting that the drive powers down after each shock event.