Bad Luck Weekend – 3812 days old

[JohnnyBra]

Friday night just WASNT my night.

For internet sharing, I run a p166 w/ Win2k using SyGate software. This lets me share out my cable modem through the house (and is also a handy way to run a FTP server and Firewall).

Anyways, I uploaded some work earlier in the day, so I open up Network neighborhood to get my files. Strangly, my 1ghz WinXP machine crashes. It's been up for 13 days, so I think "no biggie.. happens all the time".. Reboot, and try again.. Same Result.

Now, I'm a lil suspicious. I reboot my XP machine, then walk over to take a look at the p166 Server. Wouldn't ya know, it's locked up. There's my problem! Hit the reset butotn, and I walk back to my chair and wait for the system to reboot.

Naturally, it goes into Chkdisk. Add 5 minutes to boot time, so I go get a sprite. When I return, it's still at 23%.. then, every computer guru's worst fear smacked me in the middle of the head. I hear the dreaded "click-click" of sector damage on my C:\ drive..... NOOOO!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!



Skip ahead after another 45 minutes of waiting to see how bad the damage is, and it's still scanning. It finished the used space of the HD and is now at 26% of the freespace, still finding damage. I cancel scan, and since system area's are done, try to boot.. Nope.. Nada.. It's toast..

Rip out the machine, swap out the drive with another waiting in reserves.. Then pull out my Trusty Ghost Image CD. Fire up ghost and prepare for a quick HD rebuild..

4 minutes later, I'm presented with CRC errors while extracting the files from the ghost image..
Try again.. Same Thing.... ARRRRRRRRRRRRRR!!!!!!

Well, this is going to take some time to fix. So I switch Cat5 cables and plug my 1ghz directly to the cable modem. About that time, the modem quits, as well as half my TV Channels.. Call cable company first thing Saturday, they promise to try and get to it this weekend.

Finally, around Sunday Afternoon, the modem begins to function again.


Where am I now? NewEgg should be delivering my LinkSys router sometime mid-week.

I'll still rebuild the machine.. Just gotta manually reinstall Win2k.. then I'll still set it up as my FTP/HTTP server and testbed.. But it will no longer be my backbone to the internet!

[[ GK ]]

dang, JB! Bad luck really came to roost on your doorstep. :katz: :pcburn: Hope things are back in working order soon.

[Tuffie]

Well that really sucks JB hope the router gets ya all fixed up.Trouble does seem to come in bunches !!

[Dramen]

Sorry for your troubles JB, damn thats a ton of bad luck in just one day for sure.

Do you think maybe you had some damage from a surge > cable line which damaged the drive??

[JohnnyBra]

The drive had just a small handful of sectors damaged when I got it, about 3 years ago.. But scandisk blocked em away from use, so I didn't think it would cause much problem.

I guess it did great to last this long before the damage spread.

One thing I forgot to mention.. The CD Rom in that server had died last week, so it got replaced along with the Hard Drive >_<

Tiz what happens when we build computers from junk, I fear.

[Dramen]

Ok, gotcha. Good luck with the router, and good choice. My linksys is been running 24/7 for 3 years without a hitch. (Dramen knocks on wood)