The most incredible SUPER virus.

[PcTek9]

well it's another interesting day here in computer land.

I have a PC that I installed an os on and would reboot it and it would have trouble finding the sound card, or some other strange mysterious thing would occur.

I thought the memory was bad. I ran memtest86+ all night. It was fine.

I thought the hard disk. So, I looked at the smart data. I ran Victoria, I ran MHDD, I ran ontrack, I ran seagates own diagnostics. Yep. I even ran some other things I could not remember what they are, but nothing showed the hard disk was bad.

I suspected a super virus. So I formatted the drive. I partitioned several times with (1) acronis (2) partition magic (3) ranish partition manager each time it failed.

After all that other trouble, I was beginning to think it was some sort of bizarre super virus, but I had wiped the mbr several times, reformatted, and repartitioned several times. Every diagnostic I ran on ultimate boot cd, and quite a few others showed the hard disk checked out absolutely fine every single time.

I jump into linux and run the command e2fsck -cf /dev/hdc1
The command immediately returns an error message:
bad magic number in the superblock.

so i add 8192, and try again, then i add another 8192 and get 16384+1 etc.
None of them are accessible.

I exchanged the hard disk for another hard disk after I got the bad magic numbers in linux. Instantly fixed.

What does this mean? It means pretty much that seagate drive diagnostics and all the others are crap for some issues, and so is pretty much everything else, and that i highly recommend if you experience a similar problem, just swap the drive anyway...

Linux is what told me what the problem was... (everything in red) I have no idea why other diagnostics for windows and dos completely failed to report anything at all.

 

[chrisaroz]

I'm sorry, I must not be following you lately because I'm easily confused by some of your recent posts.

You're saying you had a bad drive, is that right?

 

[lgtechcomputers]

well it's another interesting day here in computer land.

I have a PC that I installed an os on and would reboot it and it would have trouble finding the sound card, or some other strange mysterious thing would occur.

I thought the memory was bad. I ran memtest86+ all night. It was fine.

I thought the hard disk. So, I looked at the smart data. I ran Victoria, I ran MHDD, I ran ontrack, I ran seagates own diagnostics. Yep. I even ran some other things I could not remember what they are, but nothing showed the hard disk was bad.

I suspected a super virus. So I formatted the drive. I partitioned several times with (1) acronis (2) partition magic (3) ranish partition manager each time it failed.

After all that other trouble, I was beginning to think it was some sort of bizarre super virus, but I had wiped the mbr several times, reformatted, and repartitioned several times. Every diagnostic I ran on ultimate boot cd, and quite a few others showed the hard disk checked out absolutely fine every single time.

I jump into linux and run the command e2fsck -cf /dev/hdc1
The command immediately returns an error message:
bad magic number in the superblock.

so i add 8192, and try again, then i add another 8192 and get 16384+1 etc.
None of them are accessible.

I switched the hard disk after I got the bad magic numbers in linux. Instantly fixed.

What does this mean? It means pretty much that seagate drive diagnostics are crap for some issues, and so is pretty much everything else, and that i highly recommend if you experience a similar problem, just swap the drive anyway...

Linux is what told me what the problem was... (everything in red) I have no idea why other diagnostics for windows and dos completely failed to report anything at all.

This is an interesting topic however I am confused.
What do you mean by 'I switched the hard disk'? I suppose if it is a unix/linux term then that might explain why I am confused.

That is troubling that the manufacturer's tool was not able to address the problem or identify an issue.
When you say you ran the seagate diagnostic utility, does that mean a quick test, full test and/or zero the drive?

 

[NYJimbo]

Yeah, this is weird. Do you mean you swapped the drive or did something with the drive geometry?

Clarification needed.

 

[stevenamills]

Lost interest anyway.

 

[NYJimbo]

C'mon on fellers. These are exactly the type of responses that are reduing this board to color of "ride" threads.

Do you know what we are talking about ?

 

[lgtechcomputers]

C'mon on fellers. These are exactly the type of responses that are reduing this board to color of "ride" threads.

Are you sure you understand what is being asked?

 

[PcTek9]

Yes, I physically switched the drive for a different hard drive. What word do you people use up there? swap? exchange? Anyway. I did use ALL of seagates diagnostics. Of course you always try the quick one hoping that will turn up something, but then naturally I did the LOOOOONG one. Seagate has several diagnostic toolsets though going by various names, and I tried them all. But as you are probably aware, victoria is a very intensive program for hard disks (and it's free), but it gets down to the sub levels of hard drive operations (if you dont know about it check it out, b/c it has a lot more to offer than most drive checkers). Unfortunately, none of this technology would find a single thing wrong.

 

[PcTek9]

'I switched the hard disk'?

That means I exchanged it for a different hard drive.

That is troubling that the manufacturer's tool was not able to address the problem or identify an issue.

Exactly!!! The manufacturers software could not identify any problems with the drive at all.

When you say you ran the seagate diagnostic utility, does that mean a quick test, full test and/or zero the drive?

All of the above! quicktest, full test, and zero'd the drive.

 

[Elemdee]

And that is why a)you are a great tech because you have learned many ways to try to get around to the problem and b)I need to learn more about Linux.

Nice catch.

 

[lgtechcomputers]

That means I exchanged it for a different hard drive.


Exactly!!! The manufacturers software could not identify any problems with the drive at all.



All of the above! quicktest, full test, and zero'd the drive.

Gotcha...somehow I read that you had 'switched', done something to the drive, via linux and then it had worked.

Might be a good experiment to do with Cygwin while in windows.

Thanks for the clarifications.

 

[PcTek9]

This could be relevant, some way. Because I think a problem of this magnitude is substantial for all technicians.

Here is what I used when I was trying to create a new partition:
1.) partition magic pro
2.) acronis disk director
3.) gparted
4.) ranish partition manager (freeware)
5.) parted
It would work and then it would mess up agian, and I have never had a problem creating partitions in operating systems. (beleive me, once you work on partitioned data sets on Zos, mvs370, and os/390 you'll never have another doubt about drive geometry on any operating system - personal computers are much easier than mainframes... personal computers are much less complicated.)
Then I used :
1.) the troubleshooter
2.) mbr wizard
3.) victoria
4.) hdd regenerator
5.) norton disk doctor
6.) ontrack disk manager
7.) mhdd
8.) seagate seatools
9.) seagate for dos
10.) memtest86+ (testing memory)
11.) windows memory diagnostic (another free memory testing program.)
When I booted a linux cd, then went to a command prompt and issued the command: e2fsck -cf /dev/hdc1 and that gave me a huge page of error - with the gist being bad magic numbers in the superblock.
Also i had done all this.
fdisk -l pnwa (linux version dont confuse with windows fdisk)
parted /dev/hdc
mkfs -t ext2 /dev/hdc1 (i was originally using an ext4 partition but dropped back)
e2fsck -f -y /dev/hdc1
but of course when the first e2fsck -cf gave the error for that device i switched drives (exchanged hard disks) .
again the only reason i am sharing this with all of you, is because not any of these hard drive diagnostic programs identified any problem. but every time i attempted to install any os on the drive it would install fine then upon reboot the pc would claim miscellaneous hardware could not be found, i.e. soundcard, keyboard halfworked, etc.
i eventually put in the new drive and stuck slitaz on it with:
mkdir /mnt/peridot
mount/dev/hdc1 /mnt/peridot
mkdir /mnt/peridot/boot
cp -a /media/cdrom/boot/vmlinuz-* /mnt/peridot/boot
cp /media/cdrom/boot/rootfs.gz /mnt/peridot
cd /mnt/peridot
lzma d rootfs.gz -so | cpio -id
rm rootfs.gz init
grub-install --root-directory=/mnt/peridot /dev/hdc
nano /mnt/target/boot/grub/menu.lst
title SliTaz Custom Linux for JSH
.......root(hd0,0)
.......kernel /boot/vmlinuz-2.6.25.5-slitaz root=/dev/hdc1 vga=normal

saved, exited, everything works great. (and it's faster than photons!

finally: The main point is the manufacturers diagnostics failed to find anything wrong with the original drive, and so did a contemporary array of disk diagnostic tools.

 

[purple_minion]

I never trust manufactures diagnostics, remember if it's not dead dead, they don't want to deal with it.

I'd be curious if you ran a secure erase with hdparm in linux if it would clear it up.

 

[Davena]

PCTek9,

I for one, love to read posts like yours. Sounds like you tried SEVERAL ways around the issue- signs of a very good tech.

FYI-I hate to fold on a hard drive too.

 

[PcTek9]

I definitely know it is the drive, since the new drive is still running like a champion.

The other drive would have tossed xp or linux off into tatters by now.

* I have not 'folded' it on it yet. I actually have it doing a 'secure erase' with hdparm under my linux raid array at this very moment, and will post the results tommorrow.

 

[iladelf]

PcTek9, I have always been impressed with your knowledge-base from what I've read here on the forums, and appreciate the input on this particular issue, but I must say this; how exactly did you find the time to do all of that???

My biggest issue with "problem" repairs is that THEY TAKE UP TOO MUCH OF OUR TIME. Granted, I want to be as thorough a tech as possible, but too me, it's a heckuva lot easier to fix 2-3 other "normal" computer repairs in the amount of time spent messing with issues like this.

These money wasters kill our bottom lines, I believe. But it's a Catch-22, because if you don't fix the difficult issues, you'll end up having frustrated customers that will leave you and take their business elsewhere.

In short, I've been there, brother, and it sucks. Royal.

 

[pc-wiz]

Correct me if I am wrong, but, wouldn't it have been quicker to just try a new hard drive instead of trying to troubleshoot the old one???

 

[iptech]

Correct me if I am wrong, but, wouldn't it have been quicker to just try a new hard drive instead of trying to troubleshoot the old one???

...and cheaper I would have thought.

 

[ATTech]

finally: The main point is the manufacturers diagnostics failed to find anything wrong with the original drive, and so did a contemporary array of disk diagnostic tools.

Hi, my name is Technology. I don't believe we've met!

 

[Galdorf]

I don't use mfg hd diagnostics the number of times it passed a drive only having it failed was to much.
I use either hdd regenerator or MHDD both are boot disks and give very accurate tests.
If something goes wrong like you describe i always zero out the drive that seems to fix it but sometimes a failing cache can cause this problem no hd mfg test checks this.
If a customer has a failing cache first thing i do is a reverse disk image.