Hard Drive problems?

[Gol]

Allright gang, I'm about ready to rip my hair out, so hopefully you can help me with this one: I have to hard drives, both 250 gb. One is a Maxtor, the other a Western Digital. The Maxtor(which is the older of the 2 drives, btw) has two partitions on it: The first partition is a 6 gb partition which contains my Windows install, the second one occupies the rest of the drive space and serves as storage. Every two weeks to a month, When I'm rebooting, I get a message saying that the hal.dll file is missing. I looking through this forum allready and tryed everything suggested, to no avail. Finally I gave up this morning and reinstalled Windows. This evening when I got home from work, My computer crashed and game me an error on bootup that said :DISK BOOT FAILURE, INSERT A SYSTEM DISK AND REBOOT or something to that effect. Does this have something to do with my hard drive? Is it bad? I know its not the Western Digital, because it hadn't even been plugged back in yet when this latest crash occured. Thanks, Gol

[Large Burgershie]

The Maxtor(which is the older of the 2 drives, btw) I get a message saying that the hal.dll file is missing. :DISK BOOT FAILURE, INSERT A SYSTEM DISK AND REBOOT!! Gol

1. WTF!! IS BTW??? 2. hal.dll (NOT AGAIN) LOLZ!! 3. Yes Very BAD!! OK heres what you need to do reinstall windows do not connect the new hd leave it out if you can delete your partition. Then choose advanced on start up. What OS are you eunning (windows is not very descriptive) Xp, 98, 2000 ??? etc. Try disconnecting any recently installed hardware meaning anything thats been installed in the larst 3 months. Ummmmm... If i can know what are your machine specs. Not really much else to say. Tell me what are your results. Hope that helped

[Gol]

Here's my system specs: AMD Athlon XP 2700+ MSI K8MMV Motherboard 768 MB DDR Ram(1 512 and 1 256) Radeon X800 Video Card 250 GB Maxtor Hard drive DVD-Burner CD-Burner

[richh0323]

The HAL (Hardware Abstact Layer) can be traced to hardware problems. I noticed that one thing you have in you're specs is one 512 mb and 1 256 mb ram module. This can lead to stabliity problems, NTFS file system has allways been picky on matched ram, NT was famous for this. It would crash and sometimes wipe out the file structure. I recommend that you keep ram matched in size and manufacture. Check out the type with the M/B manufacture, is it on the list of approved for the board. One thing you can do if the disk will not boot now is reinstall new, but force the HAL layer. check out this link to Microsoft http://support.microsoft.com/kb/299340/ You may want to this option when reinstalling Advanced Configuration and Power Interface (ACPI) PC Applies to a single processor motherboard with single processor.

[Gol]

I know its not the ram, because it started happening when I only had one chip(the 512).

[Gol]

Also, all my drives are formatted FAT32, not NTFS

[Large Burgershie]

I noticed that one thing you have in you're specs is one 512 mb and 1 256 mb ram module. This can lead to stabliity problems, NTFS file system has allways been picky on matched ram, NT was famous for this. It would crash and sometimes wipe out the file structure.

LOLZ wish I thourght of that....

Also, all my drives are formatted FAT32, not NTFS

Well...... thats changes the opitions. Can you access your computer at all? If you can try system restore. If you have Norton Ghost use that. Try reinstalling xp if you have a legit xp cd. (by the way what os are you running) thats all i have now i will look into it.

[richh0323]

HAve you added any hardware about the time the problem started happening, or do you remember any updates to the software for any hardware?Another option is use the WD hard drive for the main boot drive and see if the problem clears up

[Gol]

I know a Windows reinstall won't work, because thats what I've been doing, and this problem keeps happening. It will be fine for like two or three weeks and do the same thing again. As far as switching the drives, I'm doing that as we speak. Should I switch to NTFS, since I'm gonna have to format anyway, or should I stay with FAT32?

[Large Burgershie]

as you proberly already know NTFS can read FAT32 and FAT16 so mabey you should use both, can you? try uninstalling all hardware not needed on your comp, network cards, printers,scanners etc. Then restart your computer. the reason you only see it once or so a week is because it has something to do with a security feature. again what windows os are you running? the Hardware Abstact Layer (hal.dll) is an impottant and you should get it during a service pack update so although i don't like to say it install sp1 &/or sp 2. you can do a search for hal.dll reinstall etc. i sorry but im running out of ideas. have you tryed a system restore?

[richh0323]

The best thing you can do is a compleat format aand new install with NTFS file format. It's the most secure and stable of all the file formats, the difference is the way it stores the file structure, if you have a problem in fat32 you can loose the intire disk structure, NTFS you would loose a cluster, but the cluster has a back up that will repair the cluster on the next boot up. I included a informative link you may be interested in. A new install will need a 98 CD and XP CD, (or full install disk), one word of caution is allways let the computer shut itself down, this allows it to back up file structure data. http://www.digit-life.com/articles/ntfs/ http://www.microsoft.com/technet/prodte ... 8d8e4.mspx

[victor.salazar]

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[samma440]

Also, all my drives are formatted FAT32, not NTFS

How did you get 250GB disks formatted on FAT32??? My computer only does that for HDDs with 32 or less GB... >_>;

[richh0323]

This may answer you're questions Capacity of the hard drive is too large for the BIOS to support Computer systems built prior to October of 1998 typically hang or freeze while auto detecting large hard disks during system startup. Common BIOS capacity barriers include 528 MB, 2.1 GB, 8.4 GB, and 32 GB. There are multiple solutions to work around BIOS capacity barriers, always disconnect the ATA and power cables first before entering the BIOS, to keep the system from hanging. To troubleshoot this problem follow these steps. Restart and enter the system BIOS to set the drive parameters manually. (Entering the system BIOS is usually accomplished by pressing F1, F2, or DEL right after powering the system on. Look for an on-screen message stating which key to press.) Set the BIOS parameters for the drive from Auto-Detect to None, or Off. Save settings, exit setup, and power the system off. Save BIOS settings and exit. Reconnect the power and ATA cables, power the system on and boot to the MaxBlast CD or Floppy. When the system boots to the MaxBlast program, choose the Utilities option and select Set Drive Size. MaxBlast will register the maximum LBA the system BIOS can accommodate. Agree to the recommended settings MaxBlast has supplied, and finish the process. Restart, enter the system BIOS, and set the drives parameters back to Auto-Detect. Save settings, exit setup and reboot to the MaxBlast CD or Floppy and run the normal install. When finished partitioning and formatting the drive, follow the instructions to install Windows. Alternate Settings: Steps 1 and 2 above will not work on some system BIOS’s. This will be noticed by the system still hanging at startup or MaxBlast being unable to detect the drive after the BIOS has been set to none. Try setting the drives parameters to a User Definable Type with 1024 cylinders, 16 heads, 63 sectors. Set the LBA to Normal, Standard or Disabled, Write Pre Comp (WpCom) and Landing Zone (LZ) settings; can be set to zero. Save settings, exit setup, and power the system off. Reconnect the power and ATA cables, power the system on, and boot to the MaxBlast CD or Floppy. Perform the MaxBlast normal install without using the set drive size feature. If MaxBlast doesn't detect the drive and you followed all the troubleshooting steps above you may need contact your motherboard manufacturer for a BIOS upgrade or purchase an Ultra ATA PCI adapter card. Maxtor's online store, http://www.MaxStore.com, offers a complete line of Ultra ATA PCI cards that provides support for large capacity drives. Faulty Hard Drive If after all the above checks and procedures have been performed, you are still having trouble installing the drive, or O/S. It is recommended to run the PowerMax, drive diagnostic utility, to determine if the drive is defective. If PowerMax returns an error code please proceed to the Warranty Information Page.