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Dell inspiron 6000 corrupted/missing OS files - what causes it ?



 
 
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  #1  
Old October 4th 18, 08:26 AM posted to microsoft.public.windowsxp.general
R.Wieser
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Posts: 1,302
Default Dell inspiron 6000 corrupted/missing OS files - what causes it ?

Hello all,

I've got an old hand-me-down Inspiron 6000 which I fully wiped,
repartitioned and (re-)installed XPsp3 on it. But for some reason or another
it now once in a while refuses to boot, mentioning that some OS file has
gone missing. (FYI: none of my other 'puters running the same OS show any
such problem)

I've been googeling about it and have found a number of messages about
people experiencing the same, but all of them focused on getting the 'puter
to run again and none on fixing the root cause of it.

I've SMART checked the drive, and it came up healthy.

Therefore this post: Does anyone know or have an idea to what is causing it,
and maybe also to how to fix it ?

Regards,
Rudy Wieser

P.s.
Recently I've also seen it blue-screen while doing absolute nothing. Maybe
(guessing) related to it trying to go into power-save mode (its on mains the
whole time) ?


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  #2  
Old October 4th 18, 01:11 PM posted to microsoft.public.windowsxp.general
Paul[_32_]
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Posts: 11,873
Default Dell inspiron 6000 corrupted/missing OS files - what causes it?

R.Wieser wrote:
Hello all,

I've got an old hand-me-down Inspiron 6000 which I fully wiped,
repartitioned and (re-)installed XPsp3 on it. But for some reason or another
it now once in a while refuses to boot, mentioning that some OS file has
gone missing. (FYI: none of my other 'puters running the same OS show any
such problem)

I've been googeling about it and have found a number of messages about
people experiencing the same, but all of them focused on getting the 'puter
to run again and none on fixing the root cause of it.

I've SMART checked the drive, and it came up healthy.

Therefore this post: Does anyone know or have an idea to what is causing it,
and maybe also to how to fix it ?

Regards,
Rudy Wieser

P.s.
Recently I've also seen it blue-screen while doing absolute nothing. Maybe
(guessing) related to it trying to go into power-save mode (its on mains the
whole time) ?


Does the failure to boot, happen right after it blue screens ?

Is the missing file a .reg file ? You could start the
machine and manually do a (named) Restore Point, and if
you use rstrui or similar in Safe Mode on a failure, using
that Restore Point will have a copy of the Registry files
and would restore the registry.

When the machine BSODs, if you're lucky there will be Event Viewer
(eventvwr.msc) entries mentioning a particular STOP code.

Some BSODs don't allow for triage, and there won't be
a log at all. If the ability to write the disk isn't
working, it would be pretty hard to log the crash.

You can disable Automatic Restarts so that the BSOD stays
on the screen until you tend to it. That's not good if
you happen to be on battery though. I presume the machine
will still power off, even if it cannot hibernate properly,
before the battery is drained completely. So if you, say,
started the laptop, left it on battery and walked away,
it did a BSOD, then the hardware will still turn off
the power, even if the OS isn't running.

STOP codes, if you study a bunch of your crashes, will either
be themed ("it's always NV.dll") or the BSOD numbers will be
random, with some being really obscure codes that don't happen
very much. The "themed" ones are telling you the driver
you chose, isn't a good one, or alternately, the video
card is fried or something. Whereas the "random" ones,
a STOP 0x11 one day, a STOP 0x42 another day, a STOP 0x99
some other day, that is hinting you should be running
a MEMTEST and verify memory. Followed by a Prime95
(mersenne.org/downloads) Torture Test option to prove
the CPU, NB, and memory are all good.

If you need to decode STOP numbers later, there is this.

http://aumha.org/a/stop.htm

Paul
  #3  
Old October 4th 18, 01:32 PM posted to microsoft.public.windowsxp.general
R.Wieser
external usenet poster
 
Posts: 1,302
Default Dell inspiron 6000 corrupted/missing OS files - what causes it ?

Paul,

Does the failure to boot, happen right after it blue screens ?


No. It has happened after I shut down the machine, leave it for some time
(an hour or so) and than try to switch it on again.

Is the missing file a .reg file ?


I've not seen that one mentioned yet.

You could start the machine and manually do a (named) Restore Point


No restore points I'm afraid, as I've disabled them.

You can disable Automatic Restarts so that the BSOD stays on the screen
until you tend to it.


Also done as part of configuring the machine. I did not see anything
specific, other than "to protect the ... {data integrity?}" it stopped
functioning.

I presume the machine will still power off, even if it cannot hibernate
properly, before the battery is drained completely


It does, and its always on mains (its an old laptop, and cannot get much
time from its batteries anymore).

But its not the blue screens I'm worried about, as those are just the
end-effect. Its the suddeny not having certain files anymore which I'd
like to tackle.

Regards,
Rudy Wieser


 




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