Odd HD problem freezes XP

I am having a very odd problem with my hard drive that causes XP to freeze (I thought XP was supposed to end these kinds of things).

I have a 60G HD that I divided into 2 partitions (both NTFS). The primary partition is 40G and contains XP while the 20G partition is used for network sharing.

It appears ( I use that advisedly since I don't really know how to make a definitive determination) that high volume data transfers, between the 2 partitions, causes XP to freeze. The only way out is to hit the reset button. The freezes are completely random, sometimes after a few meg and other times after a couple of gig.

I have hammered the partition over the network with no problems (of course that is much slower even at 100M then partition to partition). It is not clear if high volume copying on the same partition causes the same problem. It may have happened in the course of my testing so I'm not sure. In any case, the partition to partition copy is pretty consistant in causing the freeze. Am I looking at some kind of weird hardware problem (if so why doesn't XP report it) or is XP doing something to me? TIA.

 

Can you give some system specs? How much mem? How is your pagefile configured?

 

Thanks for the reply. I don't know how much detail you want but for starters it is an AMD 850 with 512MB. I do not know what 'pagefile' is so it must be what ever XP makes it as default. You'll have to help me out on getting details.

 

Have you installed SP1?

PS. Yes. I realize how easy a question "details" is, and how difficult to answer unless it is narrowed down a bit. Sorry about that. I guess you could list details all day .

 

Thanks. Yes, SP1 is installed.

 

Errors or warnings in your event logs that look like they might have more information?

BIOS updated to the most recent version?

 

See what the Event Viewer says, as Newt suggested.

I had a similar problem pre-SP1, but not so serious as yours. Explorer crashed often when transferring files from one partition to another. There was never any data loss, however, and to XP's credit, it successfully completed the file transfers even after the error box popped up.

To be honest, I'm not sure which of the multiple things I did actually helped. Installing SP1 may have reduced it, but it still happens now, though rarely. I even reformatted one partition to NTFS from FAT32 to see if that would help. No difference.

So, I'll pass along a couple things I did which may help. But even if they don't, I think they have healthy effects anyway.

First, run a chkdsk on all your drives. If the time since you last defragged is such that it may be time again, that is a good idea, too.

Go to Folder Options in Control Panel, View tab. Check the box next to "Launch folder windows in a separate process ". You have plenty of RAM for this. It will basically start a new instance of explorer for file-management tasks. If something interferes with the file manager, or it crashes, it is a lot less likely to affect explorer as shell and bring it down, too. The default is off because people with slower machines or less memory should not use it. But it is a safety valve against crashes.

Since you have all that RAM, we may as well put it to use. It made a big difference in the rate of these inter-partition transfers when I increased the page lock limit for Input/Output operations. For 512 megs of RAM, 65536 kb, rather then XP's default 512 kb, is a good amount.

Run: regedt32

Navigate to:

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\System\CurrentControlSet\Control\Session Manager\Memory Management\IoPageLockLimit

Set the value to 65536 (be sure to choose decimal) or 10000 (hex). This won't take effect until a reboot.

So, there's a couple things that were probably a good idea anyway. Please let me know if it helps your problem at all.

 

Thanks for the reply. I defrag weekly.

Odd? I don't have IoPageLockLimit in that path.

 

I forgot to answer the first question. There is nothing in the event log at the time of the failures.

 

Well, you can put it there.

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Session Manager\Memory Management

IoPageLockLimit REG_DWORD 0x00010000 (65536)

 

<shutter> If you say so. Playing with the registry makes me nervous.

 

LOL. And it should. No one should be mucking around in the registry unless they are nervous! It would save the people on this bbs a lot of time if more people were nervous.
If you sold life insurance, would you sell it to an electrician who wasn't afraid of electricity?

Try to make value as described. If it looks wrong, remove it and try again.

 

Thanks and done. (and that should have been shudder not shutter).

The results are inconclusive as I have not had time to wring it out completely. However, while it did not solve the problem it did seem to change it. I ran the job that always freezes. In my test, it did not freeze but autostarted. After the reboot a "device driver error" was reported to Microsoft. Unfortunately, it did not say what device driver it was.

 

Looks like we are at least on a parallel trail.

Now might be a good time to look for driver updates, anyway. It could be a driver that has nothing to do with the problem at hand and only shows its deficiency when the machine is under load.

Start with the usual suspects: video driver, NIC driver, sound, and the IDE controllers.

To simplify matters, right-click the drivers and choose Update while you are connected to the internet. Let it do the automatic search to see if it can find updated drivers. (This is so easy, I occasionally do this to every driver in Device Manager).

If that doesn't help, go to the manufacturer's site and look for updates. IDE controller updates will probably be on the motherboard manufacturer's site. Other's may be at the computer maker's site. Then the component maker's sites.

What is the make/model of the computer, your mb, etc.?

 

That was one of the first things I did. I already posted the CPU and memory. The MB is a VIA Technologies but I don't know the model. The video card is an NVIDIA X-Terminator (AGP adapter). The only add-on is an Adaptec AHA-2940 PCI SCSI controller, I know that is old but I don't have the money to buy a new one. I have not tried pulling it to see if the problem goes away. Although anything is possible I would expect that to be the most stable component since all the bugs were wrung out years ago.

 

Are all your drivers XP (WHQL)? Though XP is very stable, it really hates non-WHQL drivers (which is probably why it is so stable).

Did you install any drivers that warned you but you decided to proceed anyway?