Funny HDD fault...

[jonnywombat]

Here's one that has stumped me.. and any thoughts appreciated..

My sis brought me her PC today (XP) which was badly infected..

I decided rather than trying to sort it I was gonna nuke the HDD and start over...

Inserted windows disc... got as far as "loading windows" then got a stop error regarding HDD... either infected or faulty..

OK no prob, knew it has bad virus.. so slipped in a cd and Nuked the HDD back to the stone age.. then formatted into 1 NTFS partition.. so HDD back to a "new" condition..(using Gentoo live cd and Gparted)

tried to install windows another twice and on both occasions got same stop error.

SMART not throwing any error, Installed Ubuntu without issue.. reformatted HDD to ext3.. and disk analyser tools throw no errors, no bad sectors, nada, sweet FA, NOTHING... and ubuntu running sweet as a nut

Just in case ran windows install process from the same cd on another machine, again no problems...

Anyone got any thoughts.. or know of any diagnostic tools other than the standard Linux tools?

Luckily my sis has been round my gaff and used my puters and has been interested in giving linux a try, just coz my machines run so much faster than hers, so no hassle in that respect... just hate having a problem I can't solve

[Rerb]

What did you use to zap the drive Jonny?

And was there an error code when it stopped?

[jonnywombat]

Originally Posted by Rerb

What did you use to zap the drive Jonny?

And was there an error code when it stopped?

Used Gentoo Gparted for zappery

same error message on every occasion..

"windows has stopped to prevent damage to your computer, if this is the first time you have seen this error reboot, If not you may have a virus, a faulty HDD or faulty HDD controller"... there was some hex at the back of it but did not take much notice

[Rerb]

You could try this :-
Darik's Boot And Nuke | Hard Drive Disk Wipe

[jonnywombat]

Originally Posted by Rerb

You could try this :-
Darik's Boot And Nuke | Hard Drive Disk Wipe

Ta mate, may give it a go if she deciddes she don't like ubuntu

[GNR Durksta]

I had similair problem with a HDD i Fdisk and deleted partition and created new one and then used partition magic and formatted then it would let me install a fresh copy of windows on after doing that

[AndyR]

It could be the CD drive that's at fault.

I have a 'copy' of a validated XP SP2 which runs fine on my childrens computers, my wifes computer and our server, but it won't run on my desk top PC or my lappy, the CD drives simply won't read them and ask me to "insert a disk" when I try to open the drives, or it shows nothing at all in the folder.