R32 issue

[qajariaq]

Hi, long time lurker, first time posting

I have an R32 with one nagging issue that I am trying to solve. Something, weather it is a virus, bad drive, motherboard, or who knows what, continually corrupts the file system on the hard drive. The drive is brand new (Western Digital 160GB EIDE, about 2 months old) and I've formatted and reinstalled XP multiple times with the same issue occurring. Its not that the system becomes unusable (at least not initially), but I see "event 55" aka 'ntfs corrupt file system warning' all too often in the event viewer. Windows eventually runs chkdsk almost every time the system boots, "fixing" files, indexes, etc. Problem is that this corrupts random files from exe's to the registry, and eventually Windows will fail to function at all. This is in a time span of about 2 weeks. The only solution to the problem is to format the drive and start fresh. My attempts to chase corrupt files and reinstall/repair things seems to hasten the inevitable.

What makes me think it could be the motherboard is that the same drive functioned perfectly in another identical R32 for several weeks before its graphics chip died - RIP - necessitating the use of my "parts" machine. The parts machine ran fine when I got it over a year ago, but I did not use it very much having another R32; I don't know if the issue just didn't get noticed until now.

Anyone ever seen such an issue? I have read through a lot of threads here, but have yet to see anything quite like this discussed. The hard drive checks out ok, no bad sectors, and I have not found any evidence of a virus...

[Harryc]

I would run the WD diagnostic on the hard drive, memtest86 to test RAM, and PC-doctor on all internal Thinkpad functions.

http://support.wdc.com/product/download ... 30&lang=en
http://www.memtest.org/
http://www-307.ibm.com/pc/support/site. ... 43240.html

[spuddog]

I know you said the hard drive checks OK, but it sure sounds like a hard drive issue. Do you have a spare drive you can use to check the machine out?

Scott

[qajariaq]

Everything checks out ok using the diagnostic software. I just checked the event viewer and I see multiple events about ntfs and system32 folder corruption starting at 10:01 pm this evening, while the machine was sitting idle.

I've got the original 40GB drive from this machine, I'll drop it in and see what happens...

Thanks for the help!

[qajariaq]

While I can't seem to pinpoint the actual problem, using a another working hard drive (pulled from my previous R32) I am see the same corrupt file system issues as with the 160 GB drive, further reinforcing the theory of the motherboard as the culprit. Knowing the history of this machine, its been used and abused by the previous owners, so it doesn't come as much of a surprise.

[RealBlackStuff]

In that case the culprit is probably a faulty IDE interface.
Only solution is to replace the motherboard.