Sorry for the off topic question, but realizing there are some terrific PC experts among us:

I began experiencing erratic PC computer 'startup' problems about a week ago. I think my secondary 40 GB Maxtor hard drive (partitioned into two 20 GB sectors : 'F' & 'G' respectively, may be the cause of the problem. Occasionally (and happening more and more now) upon inital startup (or reboot), I get a message that says a disk check (chkdsk) is being performed on either (or both) the 'F' or 'G' secondary drive . It proceeds to check the HD and often replaces files to supposedly correct problems. Other times, it says it can't fix it, and other times, the computer boots up, but then not allow access to the secondary 'F' or 'G' HD.

In attempt to solve the problem, after backing the data, I completely re-formatted both sectors (F & G) of the secondary hard drive. I then ran Norton Disk Doctor & Speed Disk and the drive checked out fine. The computer may boot up fine the next time, but subsequently, on a further reboot or startup, the initial problem occurs again. I also ran Norton WinDoctor on my primary drive and everything checks out fine there as well.

I'm pretty convinced now it must be this secondary HD that's the source of all my recent Windows startup problems, but wanted to get feedback from PC gurus here first before having to lay down cash on a new hard drive. Is it possible to disable my PC from looking at (seeing) this HD in an attempt to isolate the problem specifically to this drive?

If I do need to purchase a new HD, which brand(s) and model(s) & size is recommended? How large should the partitions be? Btw, my computer is a 1.8 gigahertz Dell Dimension 8200 running Windows XP.

Thanks in advance for all help.

Scott

Scott,

Before replacing the hard drive, I would first run Win-Cleaner, which is a great program to get rid of junk files and registries that you cannot see. Then, if the problem persists, I suggest reinstalling Windows XP and the hardware drivers. If this still does not solve the problem, I suspect the secondary drive may be the culprit, but from the way you described the activities, it almost sounds like a hic-cup in the windows shutdown procedure. I'm not an expert, but in my experience, when a hard drive experiences problems, it just plain crashes and your computer's software usually provides ample warning of the impending crash. Most hard drive crases are nothing more than the result of the drive's bearings wearing out, thereby causing the disk to be misaligned.

As for brand names, Maxtor has always produced great hard drives that seem to last forever. The only other brand that comes to mind is Western Digital, which also had a good reputation a few years ago, and I assume they're still around.

Good Luck,

Gary

Hi Gary. Does 'Win-Cleaner' do something different or include features not already included in Norton WinDoctor or Norton Utilities? I ran Norton Windoctor & Diskdoctor and the registries appeared to check out fine. How much does 'Win-Cleaner' cost, and can it be downloaded? Weblink?



Gary, I think you may be on to something here, as frequently when I shutdown, I get a display window that pops up saying certain programs running in the background are no longer responding, and must be terminated by pressing the 'end program' button in that associated pop up window, before the computer completely shuts down. These programs have included:

1) CiceroUIWndframe
2) Sys Fader
3) IMApp.exe
4) taskmgr.exe
5) Norton AntiVirus

Other than Norton AntiVirus, I have no idea what the other ones are for. Anyone know?

Thanks in advance for additional help and advice from all.

Scott

Hi Scott,

It sounds to me like you have a corrupted registry. A full reinstall might be necessary. As to purchasing a new HD, I like Western Digital Caviar Series, 7200 rpm, 8Mb Cache, 250Gb.

to see all the programs you have loaded in memory during startup, you can also go to Programs/Accessories/System Tools/System Information.

Select Startup Programs. It'll show you all the programs that get started during bootup.
You can remove them by going to regedit and look at their registry location.

Hope that helps.

Claude

Scott,
it is indeed possibile to disable your PC from looking at the secondary hard disk during the boot up phase and later, but you should open your computer case and then disconnect the IDE clable (usually is flat, grey and with a red stripe on one side) that connects your motherboard to your hard disk. You should be careful because cables of the same kind connect also the primary hard disk and the CD-ROM reader. However, if you can read the label on the back of the hard disk, it should be easy to identify the cable that you should disconnect.
Email me if you have more doubts or questions.

Hey Scott,

I want to hear more about your hardware setup. Tell us about your primary drive (the C: drive)...Model, size, etc. Do you know if it is a UDMA drive (Ultra DMA)? If so, are you using an 80-pin IDE cable? Are your BIOS settings correct for UDMA? Is the second drive in question a UDMA drive? What cable or IDE channel is it on? Why "F" and "G"? Tell us about "D" and "E" (other partitions on the primary or CD-ROM drives).

Like Dreamer says, remove the IDE cable from the secondary drive and report back your findings.

mike

Scott,

Win-Cleaner finds lots of things that Norten does not address, it's quick, easy and effecient. It's an inexpansive program that I purchased at Best Buy last year and it has been a lifesaver.

Gary

Originally posted by Scottyee.
"Is it possible to disable my PC from looking at (seeing) this HD in an attempt to isolate the problem specifically to this drive?"
----------------------------------------------
Yes. You can go to the registry and disable autocheck. There are some good informations from this site. You can check them out.
http://www.annoyances.org/exec/forum/winxp/r1038353605

Hey Scott. I have been having problems w/ a spare Western Digital 40GB HD I installed a couple weeks ago. I had installed a CMD0649 IDE board in a PCI slot to run it off, as all my other IDE slots are filled. After I got it up and running I started having problems w/ the standby and shut down of the computer, so I disabled the WD HD for the time being and every thing seems fine. I was going to try and reinstall XP, but it said it couldn't uninstall due to the spare HD. My next move is to reinstall the spare HD to one of the IDE cables off the main board and move the 100mb zip to the CMD board. You can just disable the HD from the control board device manager and see if your problems stop.

Scott, here is a list of the programs you had running and what they pertain to.

IMApp.exe=Incredimail. Try reinstalling Incredimail if the below answers don't resolve the problem. Uninstall Incredimail 'first' then reinstall it is my recommendation.

CiceroUIWndFrame=This seems to be related to Office XP speech/handwriting recognition. This might be the cause of your problems Scott. To resolve this issue: They can be disabled by going to Add/Remove Progams in the Control Panel, Add/Remove Features-Office Shared Features->Alternative User Input and Make "unavailable" Speech and Handwriting.

SysFader= Sysfader is incorporated in Internet Explorer. It is so the menu bar can "fade in" and out. This could be the problem because without killing off the program sometimes Windows will not shutdown at all. To resolve this issue you may have to reinstall Internet Explorer or update to the latest version. My first suggestion though is to try and 'repair' Internet Explorer. If repairing it doesn't solve the problem then do the additional steps if need be.

taskmgr.exe= This is your Windows Task Manager. This should not be causing the problem.

Best regards,
Mike

If you the windows is the problem.if you have the winxp disk. there is a feature in it where it erases all the system files and rewrite it with files from the cd.just insert the Cd and then restart and let me know what screen your getting.I've done this before but it's been a long time.

Scott,


so I guess the window cleaner prog worked!!
I love it...use it weekly!!



[This message has been edited by Dnj (edited 08-25-2003).]

First of all, MANY thanks to Gary, Claude, Andrea, Mike , Danb, and vic83, for sharing your advice.

Here's the latest update of my situation. I purchased and installed Ultra WinCleaner (as recommended by Traveling Easy) to remove corrupt, erroneous, or uneeded Windows registry files. Unfortunately, I found the WinCleaner utility to be overly aggressive, as it deleted 532 registry files. After that, I was no longer able to launch my email client: IncrediMail. WinCleaner also has a feature that allows you to selectively add/remove individual registries but even after I reinstalled all registry files with the name 'IncrediMail' in it , I still wasn't able to launch 'Incredi-Mail'. Thank goodness for Windows XP's 'system restore' feature which allowed me to revert back to the computer's settings before I had installed WinCleaner and it's removal of some obviously needed registry files.

In the meantime I have good news to report. For whatever reason , and which remains a mystery to me, I'm no longer experiencing computer startup problems or the HD error reports I'd gotten previously, and all the Norton Utility diagnositcs tests continue to report back that all my windows files & hard drives are error free and functioning properly. It's been 4 days now running good, so I'm keeping my fingers crossed.

Funny thing now though is that I've still got those 532 windows registry files in my computer that WinCleaner wanted to delete. I just wish I knew how to to selectively figure out myself which ones are 'actually' needed or not.

Scott

Scott. I think you are running WinXP. In which case have you tried to RESTORE to a previous date when your PC was working fine ?.

START MENU
PROGRAMS
ACCESSORIES
SYSTEM TOOLS
SYSTEM RESTORE

I have used Ultra Win Cleaner for the past 4 months and I just let it delete what eve it finds....never had a problem.

Graham UK

[This message has been edited by Graham UK (edited 08-25-2003).]

Right.

Hi Graham. If I could only figure out which specific files mistakingly deleted by WinCleaner, are required by Incredimail to run, this would solve the problem. Unfortunately just reinstalling the registry files with 'Incredimail' in the name was not sufficient. Anyone have suggestions at this point?

In addition, I'm concerned now that some of the other 532 registry files 'WinCleaner' tagged for deletion might actually be needed to run other program on my PC as well. Anyone have any advice how I might be able to customize or tweak WinCleaner to not so over zealously remove files which are actually needed?

Scott

I'm no authoriy on Incredimail but from what you wrote it seems that you were able to restore your Incredimail to a working state using XP System Restore. If this is the case then you should be able to do the following.

1. Start incredimail and back up all your data (File/Data and Settings Transfer/Transfer To New Computer) Save the backup file somewhere external and safe!

2. Run Wincleaner and let it delete all those files (even the incredimail files).

3. Reinstall incredimail from the original CD and then restore your mail files from the backup file you made earlier(File/Data and Settings Transfer/Transfer From Old Computer).

If you have checked that the cable connecting the hard drive to the motherboard is securely in and you are still having these same problems I would get important files off that drive ASAP. That sort of behaviour often precedes complete drive failure at which point all your files are gone. Don't want to scare you but I also don't want you to lose files if my diagnosis is correct. It sounds like more than a registry problem to me.

Scott,
Start making a backup of all your known files. If you are confident of reinstall all your applications, reformat your hdd and reinstall everything. Try to avoid using too many third party utilities. It will give you more confusion than solving the problem. As a Desktop Support Engineer for many years, most of the problem I've encountered are between the keyboard and the chair. If you can afford to have 2 computers, I know you can, get a dedicated one for internet use and one for your home music production. Internet is the place where you can catch all those anomalies going on your systems.

Dan

Maybe you know this already: the cheapest and fastest way to backup is buying a 2nd hard drive and use a backup software (free on the net) that can compress it to a smaller file. I use TASKZIP which is free and backs up all my important files everynight. However, to back up the operating system, I use the NORTON GHOST (not free but cheap) and it does that marvelously and quickly. But if you have XP maybe you don't need this since they have restore function.

Chris, Nigel, Danb, and Lukitoh:

Many thanks to all of you for your excellent advice. I agree that keeping your hard drive backed up (and 'to current date') essential.

I will now be definitely purchasing Norton Ghost (or similar product). It appears the HUGE advantage to Norton Ghost is that, because it saves an exact duplicate image of your entire exisiting hard drive, this will enable you (in the event of a hd crash) to MUCH MUCH MORE quickly get everything which was on your original hd, loaded on to a new hard drive, avoiding the necessity of reinstalling everything from scratch again (Windows XP, applications programs, app updates, etc). This would save hours, days, or perhaps weeks of work having to re-install every one of your software programs one by one, as well as having to locate/download 'one by one' the application updaters for each of the associated programs as well.

It's apparent to me now, that unless you backup your entire hard drive using Norton Ghost (or similar 'disk image' software), that there's no need to backup anything except for: user 'document files' & the original 'application installers'. I would assume that there's no benefit to backing up individual Windows XP System files or the installed Applications files located in the 'Program Files' folders, as these can only really be successfully reinstalled by re-launching the orginal application's 'installer' programs, right?

Thanks again in advance for feedback and clarification of this.

Scott

Scott,
There is a freeware program called "RegScrub" that I use all the time with absolutely no problems. I run it in the fully automatic mode and it has bailed me out on more than one occaision. It automatically backs up every change to the registry and if something does go wrong you can restore to any previous values.
It is not as aggressive as most reistry cleaners, which are very dangerous unless you really know what you are doing. http://home.carolina.rr.com/lexunfreeware

Good luck,
Walt

Scott. Regarding Norton Ghost. I recently updated one of our PC's New Motherboard. New CPU. New RAM. New HD. When I Ghosted my previously Image back. Win XP and all programs booted as if I had not charged a thing. XP just searched new hardware found.

Before I Ghost an Image back I remember to save 2 things, Email Address Book & Favourites. I normally Ghost an Image back every 2 to 3 months just to get rid of junk and to get a fresh start again. You will find the PC runs a lot faster.

Graham UK

Scott,

I GHOSTED everything including the applications/programs. But I usually leave out the personal/user files and let the backup program do that job for me.

If my system crashed for whatever reason, all I have to do is REFORMAT my hard disk - that's right REFORMAT then use GHOST to restore all the OS and programs that I saved previously - no need to reload programs, drivers, etc. After that, I use the backup software to restore my personal files. I usually put all my personal files in ONE directory like MyDocuments so it's easy to backup.

This strategy has worked for me since my job requires me to use Win98 and as you know that system is prone to problems and from time to time I have to reload the software.

Also, GHOST can be run from a floppy disk. You can create this disk from the program. So in the event that you have to reload your OS and programs, then just bootup your PC from floppy using your WINDOWS startup diskette. Switch to the GHOST floppy, run it and reload everything. Then in a few minutes, your system is back to normal.

There is a reason why GHOST is so popular among savvy computer users. I think there are other companies that might provide this free UTILITY program but I'm not sure. Just check at CNET website.