Electronic Circuits and Projects Forum

Originally Posted by ARandomOWl

To me at sounds like a RAM issue (could also be motherboard problem with RAM sub-system). Maybe bad RAM caused a bad HDD write which corrupted the filesystem. You can't blame the OS just yet.

No, it seems an entirely bizzarre thing to do - blame the OS for what sounds like a hardware fault - presumably it's just a usual anti-Windows rant for no reason?.

I don't get it. My take is simple. Ever since Windows 95 every Windows release for me has been an improvement. OK, with the exception of Windows ME and my view on ME was anyone running it should have been given XP for free. Fortunately I never suffered that version.

When Vista was released I built the system I am on now and use for everyday bullshit work. Screenshot attached. When installed it was the initial release. I never experienced problems with it.

When I built this thing 500 GB drives were popular so I shoved 6 each of 500 GB drives in the thing. I used 2 EA for a RAID 1 array where the OS and all my programs are installed. I left that partitioned as a single C:\ drive. The remaining 4 drives comprised a RAID 5 array. That array is partitioned into two drives as D:\ and E:\. The D drive serves as mass storage and the E drive serves as a regular Vista complete backup that runs weekly. Additionally I use Cobian to backup weekly to another system so there is no shortage of redundancy. Right now there are only a pair of 2GB sticks of RAM installed but it does fine. I yanked 4 GB to test another system and have yet to return them. The motherboard is Intel as I have never gone wrong with an Intel board, though I also like Asus. I think I shoved an Asus board in my wife's system, I forget. When I build a system I use good hardware and build around what I want.

I have a test box configured with XP and Windows 7 in a dual boot and that system running an old Pentium D runs just fine. Again, it also was built with good hardware. I generally replace a system every 2 to 4 years and this one is overdue. However, it still runs just fine with no shortage of programs installed.

As to losing files? Systems can and do fail. Even those built with good hardware and well planned. When I hear how people lose those irreplaceable photos or home movies my general comment is "You lost your stuff because you were stupid". Things you care about you backup! Simple as it gets. You build a system with crap and let things get corrupt and somehow it becomes the fault of Microsoft?

Just My Take
Ron

G'day Guy's,
Well I will confirm Winblows 7 DID totally crash, I finally got into a screen and did a rollback and next thing after a reboot winblows loaded fine. This computer isn't that old either and the MB is a Zotac micro board, 4 gig of ram i5-750 cpu and 500 gig sata HD with a 512 med graphics card.

For a week or so my missus did say CHKdisk always came up and never finished and the puter just hung so I am wondering if yes there is a hardware fault but yesterday I burnt several DVD's to backup all my files and today several more will get done to ensure no data is lost if the magic smoke does come out.

Cheers Bryan

So with it working, you did back up all important data right?

Ron

Originally Posted by bryan1

For a week or so my missus did say CHKdisk always came up and never finished and the puter just hung so

For how long? Chkdsk can take a long time to finish without visible progress reports (easily 6++ hours on a bad HDD). You might be able to save more data if you run chkdsk properly, but I would not trust that HDD anymore. Stop booting from it. Connect it to another computer and save what you can.

Have you tried to read the SMART info on the HDD?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/S.M.A.R.T.

EDIT: If the windows rollback fixed your problem and chkdsk does not report any problems, then you might want to check those SMART values on the HDD. If those are ok, I guess you can trust the HDD. I replaced my 500 gig HDD immediately after read-error-rate counter was up to five or so after 6 months. My BIOS was smart enough to report that the counter was over the manufacturer-set limit. Go to your HDD manufacturers website and see if they have a free diagnostic software for your HDD.

I have a 32-bit Win7 laptop, and it's one of the best computers I've ever had. On the other hand, my only other ones were ancient and were running no higher than XP. Most of them had dead batteries, if it even had one at all, but anyway, I love my new one. I haven't found a single thing to complain about. It does what I need it to, no problems whatsoever.

Typical fanboy reply:
Get a Mac

My reply:
Get a Mac

Hehehehe

Sorry to rain on you guys' parade

After getting my Iphone, I think my next PC will be an Apple. The best part is customer service...