Hard Disk Problem

[Lord Quake]

I recently added some extra DDR memory to my PC.
The PC is networked to one in another room.

After the upgrade i experienced random problems; system lockups, crashes in games, explorer errors. I attributed the problem to the memory but before i could replace it, i was copying a large file over the network and the system crashed. I hardware reset and returned to windows after a scandisk on drive C: only.

I went to access the d: drive where i expected to find the file i had copied from the other system, and i got the message "Drive not formatted, do you want to format now". I checked the properties and found the drive appeared empty and the filesystem reported to be RAW. I had partitioned it on a Win 98 machine and formatted as FAT32 and it had worked with XP pro since i upgraded from win98.

I rebooted to Dos and tried to read the drive from there. No problems, all the data was there, and fdisk reported filesystem to be FAT32.

I went back into windows and ran a virtual dos command prompt, same problem, drive empty, need to format.

I tried to scandisk from windows ... not possible, drive has no filesystem.
I tried a scandisk from dos ... no problem, the drive was scanned and some errors (crosslinked files and inconsistensies in File allocation tables) were fixed. Files still readable from dos (over 40 gigs worth).

Back in windows XP pro, same problem, drive appears empty, and wants me to format it .... no way theres over 40 gigs on there.

I formatted another drive in Dos as fat32. I then used a dos Xcopy32 command to copy all the important stuff over to this new drive. It worked but one problem, all the LFN structure was destroyed, so now back in windows i have all dos filenames and nothing works on it.

My plan was to move all the data temporarily, format the drive, then move all data back again. But the dos tools i have destroy the Long filenames.

Does anyone out there know A: why this happened ? and B: what tools i can use to either move all data in dos mode to a new drive then back again when i have fixed the problem drive. Or a tool that will correct the filesystem errors in Windows XP.

I dont have enough experience with XP to know how it's filesystem differs from 9x.

Heeeeeeeelp !

[morriswindgate]

Real posibility that you have a virus, get the Disk Utilities from the drives manager or a copy of GRC.com SpinRite program and see if the Bios is reporting the drive size correctly. I am just finishing a computer that was infected with WIN95_CIH which had scrambled the BIOS, had to replace the board.
Also if you have the ability to revert to 98 go back to it for troubleshooting as it's safe mode doesn't require as many of the weblike bells and whistles

[Lord Quake]

Thanks fot taking the time to reply ...

I thought virus right away, as i have no problem with the computers C: drive i updated my virus defenitions and scanned the systems, they were both clean.

The D: drive that has the problem is a secondary drive in my system. The C: drive boots fine. But all the data i know is on D: is just not accessible from windows. from dos it's all ok. As the problem occured during a file transfer from a networked system to this D: drive then i have to assume that the filesystem was being modified as the PC locked up, resulting in damage to the windows filesystem on drive D:. I ve seen things similar to this happen before under win98, where a PC lockup results in all your filenames and folders being corrupt and unreadable from windows or dos, it only happens when you are writing data to the drive. But with this problem only windows is affected, all the data is still there intact under dos.

As for why the PC locked, well i had a memory problem which was causing random lockups since i upgraded to it.