burton@parcvax.Xerox.COM (Philip M. Burton) (08/23/87)
Recently I did a low-level reformat of my hard disk so I could clean up everything at once. (This may or may not be coincidental.) My system is a 6 MHz IBM PC AT with a Maxtor 1140, running 4 partitions. This has worked fine for many months. I recently ran into some random problems installing software, so I did the low level format, which indicated only the known bad spots, etc. However, at various times, mostly while copying a whole floppy of software, I get the dreaded error message above. Each time I have done the following with complete success: 1) Power cycle the machine. 2) Reboot. The autoexec.bat file is executed with lots of retries by the disk controller, indicating it has trouble reading the disk. 3) Run norton utilities DT to check all sectors and all files on my C partition. 4) Everything is OK. 5) Pick up where I left off, and reload the files from the floppy, when the whole thing started. Does anybody on the net have any ideas? Please post rather than send mail, because my system's mailer is flaky and I may not be able to reply via mail. Thanks in advance -- Philip Burton Xerox Corporation 408 737 4635 ... usual disclaimers apply ...
agollum@engr.uky.edu (David Herron aka Admiral Gollum) (08/27/87)
Our AT developed this once. After running several hours it would get errors on certain sectors. One of the boot sectors had this problem, so rebooting was a bit of a crapshoot. Finally we took it back to the dealer, who ran it for several hours, then ran mace when it started showing symptoms. Mace locked out several clusters and everything was fine. Except occasionally I'd still have problems booting. I finally used Mace again to rewrite the boot track and the problem went away for good. If your system develops problems after running a while, boot off a floppy if you have to, but run your disk-checker *when the disk gives you problems*, not after letting it rest/cool down. Mace always reported the disk fine when it had been allowed to cool down; the bad sectors only appeared after prolonged use. And don't be afraid to mark off 60 or 80k worth of space, if it's no good it's no good. Kenneth Herron