Auto Update to 1.2.3 lead to corrupt HDD

[Vlerkies]

Hmm, i had a similar issue a few months ago. Pc would, then would not boot, just starts spinning and and then either blue screen or cycles itself on or off without completing the boot.

 

Turned out to be the mobo that had a terminal illness.

 

If you havent boot from the windows disc, or boot in safe mode then apply an even earlier restore point.

[Cabbage]

Only have one restore point and it didnt help.

 

So the general consensus is that if I reinstall windows,that will not help as it is a hardware failure?

[cichlidfan]

Only have one restore point and it didnt help.

 

So the general consensus is that if I reinstall windows,that will not help as it is a hardware failure?

 

From what you have described, if it were my machine I would be swapping disks.

[Vlerkies]

Went to restart it and now it blue screens whenever pc boots to desktop.

 

It also will not boot in safe mode.

 

HDD, Mobo, Ram, hardly ever cpu.

 

Dont suppose you have a spare HD lying around you can format and try and instal windose on, before you format the exisitng one?

 

Make sure the ram modules are firmly secured, take them out and replace them again, just in case.

 

What you describe above was what I had, and it was my mobo that died, not the HDD, I could get into the bios is about all towards the end before nothing at all, just constant power on power off cycles.

 

So in an attempt to save your data on the existing drive before you go ahead with a reinstal its worth a trying to see if another drive will function, if you can.

Good luck.

Edited February 28, 2013 by Vlerkies

[Wolf Rider]

Hey all. I left the DCS world auto updater running when I went to work yesterday and when I came home my PC had blue screened... Went to restart it and now it blue screens whenever pc boots to desktop. Have done a run through and it seems as though I have some corrupt files in HDD. Tried loading a restore point (one had been auto created when I was at work, so I presume this was the point at which the patch started to install itself) but no joy. Looking like a reinstall windows job.

 

Anyone else come across this?

 

Windows 7 64 bit,

Q6600

Gefore 560Ti

blah blah.

 

PS. I have World/FC3/BS2/A10/CA/P51 installed. All at 1.2.2 prior to this.

 

 

What HDD are you running? (WD RED, by any chance?)

What case do you have? (Corsair 800D using the hotswap slots?)

[Der_Fred]

Your Registry's trashed, and/or possibly Boot sector.

Re-install windoze Get on the internet and download Hirens 15.2(latest I think) ISO. Burn it to CD/DVD disk.

Get hold of Ghost - save it to CD/DVD

Get you system up to scratch - Do a Ghost copy to CD/DVD (use this to reinstall to this point)

Install the rest :)

[SkateZilla]

if it's just the registry, you can boot linux live DVD,

Access the registry files,

/media/windows/WINDOWS/system32/config/

 

_REGISTRY_USER_.DEFAULT => default

_REGISTRY_MACHINE_SECURITY => security

_REGISTRY_MACHINE_SOFTWARE => software

_REGISTRY_MACHINE_SYSTEM => system

_REGISTRY_MACHINE_SAM => sam

 

Copy them to a backup folder,

Then Copy the Most recent Backup to the main folder, (usually /System Volume Information/_restore{xxx}/RPxxx/snapeshot/ )

Shutdown linux,

Boot Windows Normally.

Edited February 28, 2013 by SkateZilla

[c0ff]

I suggest to change the thread title to something less misleading.

Let's not frighten newcomers.

[Cabbage]

Feel free to alter title to represent the fact it MIGHT have corrupted it as oppose to did.

 

I tested the hard drive using Seagate's software (it's a Seagate drive). I ran the full suite of tests and it passed them all. Windows repair tool also said it could find no faults with the drive itself. Tried repairing windows using the windows 7 cd but no joy. It'd boot to desktop momentarily before blue screening.

 

In the end I saved my save games, steam downloads and user file, reformatted the drive and reinstalled windows. It seems to all be fine now. 1.2.3 full clients on the download.

[Sanch0]

Again, check SMART report and post it here. Don't waste your time for repairing and reinstalling windows when you don't know what is causing your problem.

[KLR Rico]

Plus, if you're to have any hope of recovering your stuff, stop using it as much as possible.

[Cabbage]

Smart report checked out all ok last night.

 

Ive already reinstalled windows. Pulled 200gb of user and steam files off it using anothrr pc.

[Irregular programming]

It's known too that SSD defragmentation without proper cooling can overheat it resulting in what you have now.

 

Windows has autodefrag on by default, but can ruin SSD's when not properly cooled. This is a common reason why SSD's fail. Specialy when it's an earlier generation. A simple 10 euro fan solves it pretty much. The more expensive and newer generation SSD's have better heatprotection. An SSD is nothing more than series of EEPROM's with a fast interface. An USB stick on steroids. How warm does your USB stick get when you use it to lets say watch a movie? An SSd has no moving mechanical parts so its only enemy is heat. A decent fan on your SSD also doubles the SSD's lifespan.

 

Is the scedualed defragtime during the period you were gone?

 

Windows does not autodefrag ssds.

[Sanch0]

Smart report checked out all ok last night

Diagnostic tools sometimes can't tell you if your hardware is in bad condition so I'd like to see full SMART report ;)

[Lange_666]

Windows 7 and Windows 8 should disable Defrag and other HDD pre-cache routines when a SSD is installed.

 

No it's not, at least not in my current clean Windows 8 setup. Defrag was ticked and scheduled for my SSD. Had to turn it off manually. Maybe it doesn't do an actual defrag of the SSD but the settings say otherwise.

Edited March 1, 2013 by Lange_666

[Cabbage]

To anyone who hasnt seen OP, all ssd defrag points are irrelevant as no ssd is involved.

[SkateZilla]

Feel free to alter title to represent the fact it MIGHT have corrupted it as oppose to did.

 

I tested the hard drive using Seagate's software (it's a Seagate drive). I ran the full suite of tests and it passed them all. Windows repair tool also said it could find no faults with the drive itself. Tried repairing windows using the windows 7 cd but no joy. It'd boot to desktop momentarily before blue screening.

 

In the end I saved my save games, steam downloads and user file, reformatted the drive and reinstalled windows. It seems to all be fine now. 1.2.3 full clients on the download.

 

 

That's usually a sign of a Corrupted Driver or a Corrupted Registry.

 

Reformatting is a Extreme method, most Blue Screens can be easily diagnosed with the right software and knowledge (or access to people with that knowledge).

 

Corrupting drivers is easy, my brother did to his system by having a device enable/disable rapidly. blue screened the system, and put it in the BSOD-Reboot Loop, I had to manually restore a backup of the registry through linux.

[kam]

By coincidence I saw this on slashdot yesterday.

 

How Power Failures Corrupt Flash SSD Data

http://hardware.slashdot.org/story/13/03/01/224257/how-power-failures-corrupt-flash-ssd-data

[JujuMan]

Out of pure coincidence, also when I updated to 1.2.3 my PC failed to boot on startup afterwards, blue screen of death right before the Windows 7 logon screen. Happened 4 times in a row, windows diagnostics kicked in to try and repair windows etc...found nothing as per usual , I then shut down the PC , turned the power completely off at the wall socket, made a cup of tea, thought bad stuff, went back and Hey Presto...booted back to life as if nothing had happened.

 

Weird stuff or what.

[cichlidfan]

Weird stuff or what.

 

Sounds about right to me. :D

[FreeFall]

My suggestion is that you make a backup image of your C-drive on regular basis (once a week, perhaps) onto external usb device or NAS. Your Windows just may die one day without no reason and without warning. Without backups it takes hours (days) to get your system back to what it used to be before the crash. Windows 7 and 8 are equipped with free tools to backup your system. Of course you can use 3rd party software like Acronis True Image etc.

 

One example: I have a laptop (with Windows 7 Home Premium) and one day it just decided to commit suicide. I tried everything but almost all files had just disappeared from drive C:. There was no hardware problem or virus or anything. Windows just completely died. Fortunately, I had a fresh backup of my system partition on external usb drive. It took less than two hours to completely restore my OS partition. No tweaking or adjusting needed. I just watched a movie while the restoration of OS was running. By the way, I had two partitions and only the OS partition was messed up. The other partition was totally healthy. After restoring everything was fine again, without any tweaking with settings, updates and so on.

[Cabbage]

Out of pure coincidence, also when I updated to 1.2.3 my PC failed to boot on startup afterwards, blue screen of death right before the Windows 7 logon screen. Happened 4 times in a row, windows diagnostics kicked in to try and repair windows etc...found nothing as per usual , I then shut down the PC , turned the power completely off at the wall socket, made a cup of tea, thought bad stuff, went back and Hey Presto...booted back to life as if nothing had happened.

 

Weird stuff or what.

 

Hey Juju,

 

Just be careful. Mine did exactly what you just described, got me back into windows but next time I shut down it failed to restart and I couldn't get out of the blue screen cycle. Hopefully you haven't got the same thing!

[Spasticatedtoad]

..... I then shut down the PC , turned the power completely off at the wall socket, made a cup of tea, thought bad stuff, went back and Hey Presto...booted back to life as if nothing had happened.

 

Weird stuff or what.

 

I think there may be some merit to that too. When I first set up my Tower a couple of years ago, I found about once a month, my PC. Would not boot up all of the items in the start-up menu ( including Catylist Control Centre ) and my mouse and keyboard would not boot up.

 

I would have to reboot my PC to get it all running fine again. But then one day, I updated some program's and restarted my PC and it just booted to a blue screen. I tried and tried to reboot it, but found the blue screen each time.

In a panic, I rang a faithful I.T friend and he suggested that my Tower was building up static and not discharging it.

 

Best way to tell, was to turn off the tower, then the mains switch on the Power Pack. Remove the Power Lead and turn the mains switch back on ( no power lead connected ). Leave like that for a few minutes and turn the mains back off.

Plug the power lead back in and try to boot the PC back up.

 

I found it worked a treat. About once a week to every second , I follow that tip and have not had it happen since. At first, I thought something was really wrong with my Windows install, but I've never had that problem since following that tip.

 

It may not work for you, but it would be cool if it did work. I know I was pretty stressed about my new $3000 PC at the time. And it just seems to be a static build- up in the case. :(

[BRooDJeRo]

Grounded wallsockets ftw. That's what the 3rd wire is for on 230V powersupplies. I don't know how these things are when you have the older 115V sockets.

[Spasticatedtoad]

I should have added in my last post, that the information I suggested was if the PC tower was plugged into and Extension that has a "Reset Button" on it.

Some of these units do not allow your tower to Discharge the static build-up through the 3rd wire.

This information is probably as useless as the information in my previous post, but it kept bugging me that I forgot to include that in my previous post. Possibly not likely to be a contributing factor in the OP's case, but I thought I would mention it anyway.