Device error - possible data loss

Hi. I didn't know where to post so I did it here.
I keep gettin this message that says something like (my win2000 isn't in english)
" Delayed announcement concerning saving.
The system couldn't save the information of the file device\harddisk vol1\documents and settings\sysop\local settings\temporary internet files\content blahblahblah all information is lost. Error may be caused by equipment failure or network connection. try saving elsewhere "
Sometimes it says disc full which isn't true.
This happens more and more often and the pc freezes for a while when this message appears. This happens all the time. While using word, copying, surfing, downloading. The filepath just changes.
What's going on and what can be done?
Thanks in advance.
-make-

 

First thing to do is some general clean-up/fix-up of the PC.

- Internet explorer and empty your temporary internet files
- start~run~cmd and at the command prompt chkdsk /r and tell it to do the check at next boot. Reboot.
- start~run~sfc /scannow and you will need your Win2K CD in the drive.
- start~run~eventvwr.exe and empty all your event logs

Next time you get the error, go back into the event viewer and locate the detailed message for that error. Open it, click on the icon below the up/down arrows (copies it to the clipboard) and paste the error here.

You may well have bad memory or a marginal drive controller and if you are set to cache information, a momentary problem will probably cause loss of the data that was cached but it will be much easier to troubleshoot after the above is done to clean the system a little.

The posting rules for the forum call for a 'meaningful' thread title. Since you are new, I've fixed this one for you. It isn't so important for this thread but when folks search later for a problem, they will be more likely to find similar issues if the thread title mentions what was wrong.

 

Similar problem with USB Zip 750

Hi,

I have experienced a similar problem with a friend of mine.

He has got 2 computers, both with USB 1.x ports. The first is running win2k, the other windows XP.

I have installed an external ZIP 750 drive for him (which is USB 2.0). It works without a hitch on the win XP box, but on the win2k it worked fine the first couple of times.

After that, it gives the same error. I tried several different ZIP disks. All had the same issue on W2K and not on WXP.

I could copy a very small file (such as a shortcut file), but with a 16Mb file it fails.

After the failed write, W2K is not properly handling the ZIP disk anymore until after a reboot. That means, it detects there is a disk, but won't show it's contents anymore.


When I have the chance, I will first try the tips from Newt.

But if someone would have a clue already, that would be nice.

Could there be an incompatibility between USB 1.x on the machine and the USB 2.0 interface of the ZIP 750 ? If so, how can I check ?

 

I've done some additional experiments.

I have connected a Zip250 to the W2K machine. This Zip250 is USB 1.1. It shows the same problem as the Zip750, meaning that a 16MB file copy to the zip results in an error as mentioned in the original post, and after that, the disks don't mount correctly anymore.

So I started to copy increasingly larger files, starting with one only a few K large. As soon as the amount to copy gets more than +/- 6Mb the error occurs.

Smaller files get copied no problem.

So to me, it seems there is a write buffer overflow of some kind. But isn't there normally a bidirectional flow control communication to prevent this ?

 

CHKDSK hangs

Interesting topic. I just today started getting the same message, "Delayed Write Error. The system couldn't save the information of the file device\harddisk vol1\documents and settings\greg\local settings\etc\etc... all information is lost. Error may be caused by equipment failure or network connection. try saving elsewhere "
-- this on an old machine which just got a brand new Maxtor Hard disk. I have had it up and running for about a week. I've been loading software, and then I get this error--
So I ran Maxtor's utility and it checks out OK, (though I did not run the low level format yet because it will throw out all my work).
I saw Newt's advice and ran CHKDSK/R. Guess what? Chkdsk hangs at 70 percent during data verification. What does that mean?
(The machine is a Celeron 466, 128MB RAM, Windows 2000Pro with current updates, and a sick new Maxtor 60 GB HD.)