Legit Reviews

I was working on this over at Maximum PC. My HDD is acting very strangly. Most games run fine (CoD2, Doom III, Republic Commando, Halo) but all of the TWO RTS games I play (Star Wars: Empire at War and Age of Empires III) have major lockup problems. The games both stutter like hell in the opening intros (it was so bad with EaW that I downloaded a no-intro fix) and then proceed to lock up randomly (usually once every 5-10 seconds) while I try to join games, make games, PLAY games etc. I have defragged using PerfectDisk 7 and ran CHKDSK overnight. Still having these problems, I downloaded the SeaTools ISO (the drive is a Seagate Barracuda 7200.7 PATA ATA100) and burned it. The tests ran fine, until it was time to display the results. 20 minutes after the last test said "100%" the results screen was not forthcoming. Reset the computer and tried again, same result. The MaxPC people think my drive is the issue. Backed up all my valuable stuff to a DVD last night (the majority of my HDD is full of games that can be easily reinstalled). EVEREST has reported the following:
Raw Read Error Rate: Threshold of 6, Value of 63, Worst of 54, Data 236185524, Value is Normal. This seems weird....

go dl Disk Checker

and run a complete check, it will tell u if u got bad sector, however, if u are very familiar with windows chkdsk go fine the log it should tell u whif u have bad sector , other wise go dl disk checker, save me time to explain it to u on how to find and read the log

http://www.rssoftlab.com/diskchecker.php

sounds like you may have some bad sectors, have you checked for this? i wouldn't recommend using windows tools for this. use the seagate tools.

TGM

http://www.GRC.com has a prog which helped me with a problem like this

It's called "Spinrite" -> but you have to pay for it......

did you use the /F or /X command with chkdsk?

if you have XP - you probably have to use /X

it will FIX the problems as it finds it.


Only other suggestion - try reinstalling windows - use the full format, not quick - and installing 1 game that was giving problems. Trial and error.
(starting fresh resolves so many problems it isnt even funny - thats why all the computer 1800 tech people tell you to do that first usually)

I cant see how the hard drive would cause the games to lock up, unless you have lockups in windows also. Windows uses the hard drive as much or more than the games would just with the stupid swap file....but i have been known to be completly wrong on occasions - ok occasion - well I was half wrong ;)


Mike

Well, I am getting lockups in 3ds max now as well. I have never heard of "chkdsk /x" before, some insight please?

Sovereign wrote:Well, I am getting lockups in 3ds max now as well. I have never heard of "chkdsk /x" before, some insight please?

if you use the GUI check disk utility in the properties part of the hard drive in question, there's two check boxes, check both of them. one is the /X or "Fix errors automatically" and the second one, which will take longer is "scan sectors for physcial errors" or something like that.

try that and then report the findings in the log in your Computer Managment Event Viwer.

TGM

I have a large number of errors like the following in my log: under "atapi" under "disk"

I have already used Chkdsk multiple times. There are no entries in the log for "winlogon" which is where CHKDSK logs are stored.

using windows checkdisk you did tick both of the checkbox's correct?

TGM

yes.

Latest CHKDSK results (found the logs)
Checking file system on C:
The type of the file system is NTFS.


One of your disks needs to be checked for consistency. You
may cancel the disk check, but it is strongly recommended
that you continue.
Windows will now check the disk.
The file reference 0x3b000000001fa0 of index entry Acr64.tmp of index $I30
with parent 0x27fb is not the same as 0x5b000000001fa0.
Deleting index entry Acr64.tmp in index $I30 of file 10235.
The file reference 0x210000000022c3 of index entry Adobelm_Cleanup.0001.dir.0000 of index $I30
with parent 0x27fb is not the same as 0x750000000022c3.
Deleting index entry Adobelm_Cleanup.0001.dir.0000 in index $I30 of file 10235.
The file reference 0x210000000022c3 of index entry ADOBEL~1.000 of index $I30
with parent 0x27fb is not the same as 0x750000000022c3.
Deleting index entry ADOBEL~1.000 in index $I30 of file 10235.
Cleaning up minor inconsistencies on the drive.
Cleaning up 24 unused index entries from index $SII of file 0x9.
Cleaning up 24 unused index entries from index $SDH of file 0x9.
Cleaning up 24 unused security descriptors.
CHKDSK is verifying Usn Journal...
The remaining of an USN page at offset 0x11a9f9e0 in file 0x4a7ef
should be filled with zeros.
The remaining of an USN page at offset 0x12069b88 in file 0x4a7ef
should be filled with zeros.
The USN Journal entry at offset 0x1206a000 and length 0x72615673 crosses
the page boundary.
The USN Journal entry at offset 0x1206b000 and length 0x73692072 crosses
the page boundary.
The USN Journal entry at offset 0x1206c000 and length 0x2928676f crosses
the page boundary.
Repairing Usn Journal file record segment.
Usn Journal verification completed.
CHKDSK discovered free space marked as allocated in the volume bitmap.
Windows has made corrections to the file system.

117218240 KB total disk space.
90569788 KB in 252084 files.
91728 KB in 17564 indexes.
0 KB in bad sectors.
477116 KB in use by the system.
65536 KB occupied by the log file.
26079608 KB available on disk.

4096 bytes in each allocation unit.
29304560 total allocation units on disk.
6519902 allocation units available on disk.

Internal Info:
90 35 05 00 5c 1d 04 00 34 65 06 00 00 00 00 00 .5..\...4e......
2a 0a 00 00 01 00 00 00 85 02 00 00 00 00 00 00 *...............
34 96 f5 08 00 00 00 00 92 cd ac 7f 00 00 00 00 4...............
be 8b 82 06 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 ................
00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 f8 fd 97 99 00 00 00 00 ................
99 9e 36 00 00 00 00 00 00 39 07 00 b4 d8 03 00 ..6......9......
00 00 00 00 00 f0 f0 97 15 00 00 00 9c 44 00 00 .............D..

Windows has finished checking your disk.
Please wait while your computer restarts.


For more information, see Help and Support Center at http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/events.asp.

all i see is indexes mis matched which could cause problems and your type of problems at their worst.

but i don't see anything about scanning for bad sectors, i believe.

did you set your chkdsk to this


the sector scan should take at least an hour or more.

it will ask you to reboot to do the sector scan.

TGM

yes....currently running SpinRite Level 5 overnight.

UPDATE: Everything works courtesy of SpinRite, thanks people. Forgot to post after it started working again because I am lazy