HDD Corruption? - Windows XP workstation.

Never seen this issue before so I want to confirm that I am thinking of the right issue.

Background - Sometime between 11:15pm and 8:24am this XP system restarted by itself. Reviewed the logs and did not find throw any errors.

However, browsing the contents (c:\windows, system32, documents and settings, root) all have folders named:
__0x00FE, __0x01a0, __0x01a2 and so on (remember the same folders are not listed everywhere, this is just an example of what I'm seeing.) I've seen 14 folders and 4 files with this same naming scheme.

I have a strong hunch that the hard drive is going bad, just need confirmation.

Find more posts tagged with

Free for TechExams community: Cybersecurity salary guide

Compare cert salaries and plan your next career move

Button

Comments

sprkymrk

You should see either "disk" or "ntfs" errors in the event logs if you have a disk going bad. Do you have any **** files that might indicate bad memory?

Megadeth4168

First thing I would do is "right click" on "My Computer" and go to properties. Then click the advanced tab, then click Settings under "Startup and Recovery" and UN-check the Automatically restart box if it is checked... This usually will force the PC to crash to a Blue Screen and give you an error code instead of restarting right away.

Next i would boot up in recovery Console and run a chkdsk /P /R to see if this finds anything. Keep us posted.

Illusionking

No **** and no errors in the logs. The department manager want to know exactly why it went down, but I'm not finding anything.

Illusionking

Megadeth4168 wrote:

First thing I would do is "right click" on "My Computer" and go to properties. Then click the advanced tab, then click Settings under "Startup and Recovery"

Done, I'll let you know if I find anything.

Megadeth4168

Illusionking wrote:

Megadeth4168 wrote:

First thing I would do is "right click" on "My Computer" and go to properties. Then click the advanced tab, then click Settings under "Startup and Recovery"

Done, I'll let you know if I find anything.

The only downside, is now you have to wait for it to crash again....

In the meantime you could run the chkdsk and maybe test the memory using a program like memtest86.