United3dArtists Archive

I am having some issues with the PC. I cannot defrag either disk; when I use in a cmd prompt: chkdsk /r,
the disks are checked at reboot, but I get a message indicating the disk format is RAW.
Yet XP boots, and I can see all the contents, on both drives.
I also cannot run trueSpace, since tS cannot find directX.

Yeah, I'm standin in it allright.

I have my most important assets backed up on dvd, so that's not a problem.
I've been researching some solutions online. Hopefully I'll get it goin soon.
But until that's resolved my 3D activity will be null.

I hope you get back soon! Do you have any idea if it's something in the physical side or virtual, he is too old?

Cya

Did you check the CPU heat sink. It will get dirty and the fan cannot cool the heat sink. Your video may have a fan.

Thanks Shell. Yes, the video card does have a fan. I'll check both the video card fan and the CPU fan.

Froo

I have found memory can cause problems. You can download a program memtest86 from http://www.majorgeeks.com" . It will install a memory test program onto a floppy drive.

For the directX problem, Microsoft has a program called DXDIAG.EXE. You can download it from microsoft if your computer does not have it.

You can look at your hard drive status by going to Control Panel > Administrative Tools > Computer Management > Disk Management.

froo wrote:I am having some issues with the PC. I cannot defrag either disk; when I use in a cmd prompt: chkdsk /r,
the disks are checked at reboot, but I get a message indicating the disk format is RAW.
Yet XP boots, and I can see all the contents, on both drives.
I also cannot run trueSpace, since tS cannot find directX.

Yeah, I'm standin in it allright.

I have my most important assets backed up on dvd, so that's not a problem.
I've been researching some solutions online. Hopefully I'll get it goin soon.
But until that's resolved my 3D activity will be null.

Hope this helps... it is a reply to a similar issue someone else had online at the following webpage:

http://www.computing.net/answers/window ... 61650.html

This may be the result of either your BIOS or OS not being 48 bit LBA compliant. First boot to the BIOS and check to see how the drive is identified there. Then watch the POST screens to see if the drive is identified by model. If so then your issue may be that you don't have SP3 or better installed. Others have had similar problems and have used various methods to attempt recovery. Look here for more info on 48 bit LBA. http://support.microsoft.com/default.as ... 305098#kb1"
There is a distro of linux called Knoppix that will install and run from one CDR, so it needn't be installed on the machine. This distro IS capable of seeing and working with Windows files when the tables are corrupted. The download is big. 699MB, or for a few bucks you can order a CD with Knoppix already on it. There may be other ways to recover.

Also....

...a year or two ago I had a problem with my daughter's computer (XP SP2) when she had inadvertantly downloaded some attacking trojan horse malware from a "free myspace layouts" page she had visited (funny how "free" is often expensive). The malware in this case wiped out her Operating System passwords so she could not get past the Windows XP Bluescreen Password Entry startup screen.

After some research online, I found there was a downloadable Linux set of files, I think in ISO format and zipped, so you could unzip them and burn them as is to a CD, which I did. I then popped the CD into her System and it booted to the Linux CD, whereupon changing the Windows XP Administrators Password was a matter of one minute's work, very easy, even came with excellent instructions. Long story short, I rebooted in XP and all was fine. Ran numerous inspection softwares to locate isolate and eliminate the Trojan and all it's fingerprints in the Registry Hive as well as the startup services areas, and finally all the additional little nightmare nuggets of new malwares it had also downloaded and not yet run.

Funny how Linux saved Windows eh? It does though, very effectively.

HTH

Ah thanks Mark and Shell.

I need to check the fans still.

I can start trueSpace now. Still need to work on the defrag, so I'll check out the utils Mark.

I recall awhile back, MS Instant Messenger was crashing, and I had a MS utility on my system called Repair (Not: Restore; I know for sure) or something.
I forgot what it was called; I'll have to find it again.

If you are looking for a good antivirus program, PCTOOLS.COM has a good program. You can try the free version to see if you like it. It works on XP home and XP professional 32.

I used system restore to get a friends computer working monday. I was able to restore it to last wed. It booted up fine. Ran PCtools and lavasoft on it to remove any bad guys.

Good luck

Get the Sysinternals Suite here. http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/sysi ... 42062.aspx"

Get Power Defragmenter GUI 3 here. http://my.opera.com/rejzor/blog/power-d ... 0-released"

Several of the Sysinternals utilities are very useful, some are mainly pure geekery or only of much use to programmers.

Put Contig and Power Defragmenter GUI in a folder and you have a very fast defragmenter.

PageDefrag defragments your paging file, registry and other normally locked files at boot time. Might need to go back and forth between Power Defragmenter and PageDefrag a few times to get everything sorted.

Found a program Testdisk . I have not tested it so I do not know if it works.

http://www.cgsecurity.org/wiki/TestDisk_Download"