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Thread: ******HDD odd********

  1. #1

    ******HDD odd********

    I usually never need help with hardware, but man I think I may have experienced an anomaly with this girl’s hardrive..... My girlfriends-friend-of-a-friend.... **** I don't really know who this piece of **** belongs to. Anyway, It's supposedly a HP HDD, few years old. It had Windows ME on it last year w3 gave them a better old board and installed a (( r4k3d Xp on it. Since ME is part of the SUE line it offers no assurance and is practically out of the scope of security talk. I'm the one who overheard someone was on Windows ME shopping online...and I was the one who offered to secure that HDD .... so that makes me pretty much the one who needs to make it right again.

    I decided to give this girl a newer board; this one's only a year old. So I asked for the HDD back so I could hook it up to this nice box, nice round IDE cables, great air flow, you'd be proud of the airflow....etc I'm real proud to give away this great secondhand box.

    I hook this HDD up, start the install..... it hangs during the final install around the " approx 30 minutes left" stage....... so I retry... same thing. No problem...... I go Autoclave on this bitch for 10% passage..... **** still hangs on " approx 30 minutes left" stage...... I grab a Solaris image, it installed just fine... I grab a Libranet image, installed just fine... Slack just fine........ try XP again, hangs on the "approx 30 minutes left" stage............... WTF.... I did a full Autoclave on that bitch it still hung up.............WTF guys have you ever heard of this??????????????????

    I already ordered her a new 20gig WesternDig..... but before I take this HDD apart, I wanted to get your Op's. Thanks, no rush.


    BTW: I've tried 4 different CD-ROMs, different cables, different, boards...the OEM disc I'm borrowing works great, I cleaned it and tried it on another drive....It's the HDD for sure.....I also hooked it up right away when I got it to see how my C2-TFM-configuration held up on a seriously naive end user running on a limited account with no password and an admin password of 1 character 1.....no updates.....It booted in under 30 seconds.... I was impressed, mother****er was clean, and process list after a little over a year was at 20 processes, the same when it left. It looked like she used it a bit too, I'll find out how much later. .


    I think this HDD just died, but it worked with linux...and there's more than enough RAM, a gig of SDRAM in this secondhand box??????


    Enlighten me, thrall me with your acumen.

  2. #2
    Senior Member
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    Small thing that got me going once

    disable all shadowing chaching and other similar stuff.

    (this will make the box really sloooooow)

    [edit]

    Wait that wont work cause that was a memmory issue. Sorry no help from me.

    [/edit]

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  3. #3
    The Doctor Und3ertak3r's Avatar
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    MEMORY!!!

    how many sticks in the machine.. if more than 1 remove all except 1.. and try the install from there..

    The winXP installer is trucken fussy .. and will cause various errors ...includoing missing files, file copy errors etc..
    "Consumer technology now exceeds the average persons ability to comprehend how to use it..give up hope of them being able to understand how it works." - Me http://www.cybercrypt.co.nr

  4. #4
    Senior Member RoadClosed's Avatar
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    when you say hang, how long are you waiting? "Just walk away man, walk away..."

    You could try getting the latest IDE driver and forcing that to load before XP starts the install. On server it's F6 to load drivers before the intallation. But I am just guessing like a monkey.
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  5. #5
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    Wow, not sure what kinda leap it is to go from "it works fine under Linux" to "it's the HDD that's died". Hardware is hardware, if it works, it will work. If other software is working fine on a given set of hardware, start working towards it being a software related issue. Hit up the XP support site and start poking around for similar hang issues. IIRC there's a bug in certain versions of the XP installer that won't install it properly with more than 512MB of ram, or it could just be because you're using a cracked version of XP. Maybe try with a legitimate one?
    Chris Shepherd
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  6. #6
    Senior Member RoadClosed's Avatar
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    Maybe try with a legitimate one
    lol
    West of House
    You are standing in an open field west of a white house, with a boarded front door.
    There is a small mailbox here.

  7. #7
    It just wanted to talk to the NET.......thanks for the replies.******Sorry about the wording, sould've been more clear, Izza tired last night.

    I'm asking here?
    Here's what I was thinking last night.............the disk writer starts its writing at the center of the Hdisc right? The more gigs you write the further from the center it writes right? Is this true? I'm not really in to magnetic forensics, but I think I'm slowly becoming inquisitive.

    Is it possible that it could've had some corrosion after a certain point, beyond what *nix needed to install, but the writer tried to write over that damaged point with XP.....making it hang??????


    There’s over a gig of sdram in this secondhand box I'm installing on (giving away). It has a castrated PIII.

    OEM's legit for until you register those keys or totally bypass it. What people do after is something different.

    Hah, Road I walked away for an hour.


    Thanks Road,Undertaker,MoonWolf,chsh

    I've never had one that wanted to talk online...??? Mine never get plugged in till they are fully configured.

  8. #8
    Senior Member nihil's Avatar
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    Hmmm,

    I would have expected you to get a disk error message rather than a hang.

    You say it was trying to connect to the internet?...............weird, I have never come across that before.............

    Given how far you had got I would imagine it was loading drivers?................maybe it was trying to find one?...............or report an error?

    I have never encountered this myself are you sure that it is an ordinary OEM CD?

  9. #9
    They call me the Hunted foxyloxley's Avatar
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    talking to the net .............. is this a clean install, or an upgrade ?

    if it WAS an upgrade, I'd go the clean route, and suspect nastiness on the HDD ?

    BUT, I've also fallen foul of the RAM fairy [?] new system / MoBo / CPU / 1GB 400MHz RAM
    just did NOT load.
    Put in an older stick of 512 MB 330 MHz RAM all OK ????

    as your now going to use a new HDD, investigate the old with a HAMMER
    so now I'm in my SIXTIES FFS
    WTAF, how did that happen, so no more alterations to the sig, it will remain as is now

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  10. #10
    Senior Member nihil's Avatar
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    Hi Foxy~

    I did a full Autoclave on that bitch it still hung up..........
    That is a utility you use to wipe hard drives by overwriting them.............so there would be no choice other than to do a clean install.

    I did wonder if it was a copied CD with some malware on it, but that makes no sense as the malware would probably want the OS to load?

    I then thought that it might be Billy Windows up to some security stunt? but I have not heard a thing on the Web.............

    Then I thought maybe it was a corporate OEM CD and was trying to do an install with network support? [The OP did say that it was *cough* "borrowed"]

    Most strange

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