Hello EE,
Running Windows98SE, with identical Maxtor 20GB hard-drives as Master / Slave. Fairly new drives (2 years) that have performed without problems.
Yesterday about 3PM I was composing a lengthy email message, when suddenly the Blue Screen of Death appeared. After "pressing any key to continue", the system appeared restored, so I continued my message. After a few hundred BSODs in the past 8 years, what's one more matter, right?
But a couple of minutes later, it happened again. This time "pressing any key to continue" did nothing. CTRL>ALT>DELETE did nothing. Anything did nothing. So I was forced to "reset".
When the system attempted to reboot, it stopped at the primary drive with this message:
"Verifying DMI Pool Data ... Disk Boot Failure, insert system disk and press enter".
Before even considering the nightmare of "inserting Windows98 SE", I attempted some troubleshooting, although my knowledge of these internals is very limited. Among the procedures I attempted (abbreviated - the whole process took several hours, and I can't really log everything I attempted to diagnose here):
1) Windows Startup Disk, option 2 (command prompt without CD-ROM support).
2) Ran:
A) scandisk c: > results > scandisk found no errors on Drive C.
B) the lesser chkdsk > same, with advice to run scandisk instead
C) Debug.exe > nothing at all happened
D) sys.com c: > nothing at all happened
2) exited the startup disk, rebooted with Western Digital's EZ drive utility (which I used to use with a WD hard drive on another computer. I wanted to see if the utility would identify my Maxtors. It did:
A) C Drive: Maytor ! 2C030I1 !!!!!!!!!!!!
Serial Number: C1CAMXYE !!!!!!
(mispelled Maxtor, and included all those exclamation points after the brand and serial number - I counted them, so what you see here is precise, not exagerrated).
B) D Drive: Maxtor 20B020HI
Serial Number: BIC9MFXE (no scramble)
My first thought was, "Virus? But how? I don't ever get viruses. I don't get Spyware. I passed Steve Gibson's Shield's Up test with a perfect score. I keep my definitions updated on Norton's Anti-Virus, and on all three Spyware programs I use and run regularly.
3) I removed Drive D and changed the jumpers to Master setting. I also decided to replace the cable with a single connection cable (previously used with a floppy drive).
A) D as C booted up, but since it wasn't completely formatted with Win98 SE, I received a couple of dozen "Found new hardware" alerts, and had to go through all that process. The resulting desktop was screen resolution 640 x 480, with no options.
A) I didn't care about that. The drive was recognized, and booted up.
4) Restored the altered Master back to Slave, installed a brand new cable, and bingo. My sweet, wonderful, precious, important original hard drive came back from the dead. The only annoyances were minor, like Go-Back needed to be re-enabled, and Zone Alarm was restored to previous settings, i.e. virgin settings.
Now I'm having a couple of odd things happening that I want to nip in the bud before something else rains on my parade. One of my software programs stopped responding, and I couldn't kill the task, so I had to reset. When booting back up, scandisk did its routine duty, punishing me for not properly shutting down Windows.
But about a third of the way through the C Drive scan, an alert popped up warning me that Scan Disk found an invalid file name, and the file name was too long, and couldn't be fixed. I asked myself, "Why now? It never did that before. And I'm sure there may be thousands of long file names on this Win98 machine, like "clients_33rd_modified_rev
ision_of_b
abys_first
_tooth_aft
er_capping
_by_dentis
t_because_
sister_acc
identally_
brokeitwit
h_thelawnm
ower.PSD"
Why is Scandisk singling out just one, thought I? And if it's 33 percent finished with the scan, it couldn't be the renamed Maxtor drive with all those exclamation points, could it?
So I Googled the Internet all over the place, until I landed at the site for "Hard Drive Mechanic", which pitches in the advertising "100% guaranteed to fix any hard drive crash or your money back". So I downloaded a trial version.
Then I wondered, "Do I have to wait for my hard drive to crash, or can I boot up with the repair "floppy" I made from the .exe file and run the diagnositcs anyway? That question was not answered in the PDF How To. The PDF How To states (paraphrased) "The next time your hard drive crashes, use this repair utility. Since it's a trial, it won't fix it, but then you can by the version that will."
Can anyone tell me:
1) How my C drive got renamed, and if those exclamation points mean anything meaningful?
2) If there's a way to restore the name to its proper spelling without the exclamation points?
3) How I can find the rogue file with the long file name that seems to be the only one causing trouble with Scandisk? I don't want to run Scandisk in Safe Mode yet, if I don't have to, because i want to look at that file. I'm still not 100% convinced the initial crash was caused by a faulty cable.
Any other safeguard tips and preventive measures and / or (preferably free or inexpensive) diagnostic utility suggestions will also be warmly appreciated.
Best wishes,
The-Muse
