Ok wtf. I have 2 hdds. 200Gb PATA and a 320Gb SATA. Theres 2 partitions on the 2nd, 50g for Vista (which I don't use anyway coz it crashes), and the rest is a Backup partition.

So last night im loading up a game and I get the BSOD 'KERNEL_STACK_INPAGE_ERROR' and when I restart, the backup partition is "Corrupt and unreadable". So I'm like fuuuk. I try loads of things, and do a chkdsk on it which ends up fixing almost everything back to normal.

But when restarting after chkdsk, I get "BOOTMGR is missing\Press CTRL+ALT+DEL to restart" crap. Sure I can fix that with my XP cd this morning... I get into Recovery console and I can't get the right password ? So I just try booting normally and walla! theres Vista's boot menu...

Anyone had random s*** like this?

Oh and I'm pretty sure 99% of the files are fine on the partition.

make sure S.M.A.R.T is turned on in bios and run your favourite disk diagnostic now (seatools, works on all drive types)

also a chkdsk /f wont hurt

yeah one of my hard disks had an aneurysm the other day and then went back to normal after a chkdsk, just had to move the "found" files back to their original places

overheating was the culprit i think - it was pretty much sandwiched between two other drives - of course i cooled the disk and it is now separated

so yeh, a bit of a scare

Two days ago my roommate lost a 240gig sata to a combination of Acronis system manager and starforce copy protection :/.
*Shakes fist at starforce*

starforce killed your roommate's drive...

You got it in one, congratulations! *golf claps insom*.

HDD running just fine -> install a game without registering to leave all that for later -> Computer runs fine without the final starforce installation for use of the game for some six hours -> Finalise registration and installation of starforce for use of said game.

Blue screen of death!

Computer is reset and comes up unable to find the Main Boot Record -> HDD is nowhere to be found in bios even after several disconnects and re-pluggins.

Go check out how many people have had HDD's and optical drives die on them from it (reportedly).
Worst I have seen before this is a corruption of data but it was definately starforce that killed this drive.

last edited by Xy at 08:55:45 10/Jul/07

Theres 2 partitions on the 2nd, 50g for Vista (which I don't use anyway coz it crashes

Perhaps you have dud memory or something if Vista crashes, you're now getting BSOD with XP and it could be corrupting data when it's written to the disk?

make sure S.M.A.R.T is turned on in bios and run your favourite disk diagnostic now (seatools, works on all drive types)

PC Wizard also seems to be able to read S.M.A.R.T. data, it tells me all my drives are at 80-85% health :(
My hard drives do get a decent thrashing a few times a week though.

ive got a box here now im sorting that S.M.A.R.T. is reporting the main drive is gonna die on

so ive just picked up a replacement drive, windozing that, and ill try and pull everything off the old drive before it dies

its saved me a few times

i had similar probs... check cabling to hdd's make sure you have latest bios and mobo drivers...

if problem persists get 2 sata drives or run 1 sata

I have a 100 gig Toshiba notebook hard drive in my lappy. I swear its about to die – my computer will randomly freeze – just everything freezes and doesn’t do anything. I grabbed SeaTools this afternoon and it passed the Long Drive Self Test. But didn’t pass the Long Generic Test and just gave a “Long Generic Test – FAIL” message. I am assuming my hard drive is buggered! Does this mean anything else? There is no error code, and google reveals nothing with that exact “Long Generic Test – FAIL” message. And most of the threads I read link me to the Seagate site with the error codes. Do I need to enable advanced features or something? I don’t want it to wipe my drive! :(

Anyone know anything about this message? Or any other tests or fixes i can do?

ive got a box here now im sorting that S.M.A.R.T. is reporting the main drive is gonna die on

smart said my drive was going to die, that was about a year or two ago & the drive still works just fine.

Perhaps you have dud memory or something if Vista crashes, you're now getting BSOD with XP and it could be corrupting data when it's written to the disk?

Well Windows XP is running fine and has been running fine for aaaaages. No probs at all. The only problem I have now is that if I don't have a bootable CD (i.e. XP/Vista bootdiscs) i get the "BOOTMGR is missing\nPress CTRL+ALT+DEL to restart" crap. It's weird coz if I have the cd in and just skip it during boot windows boots fine, but if its not in it does the error. Wtf.

Oh and Vista always freezed. I have a feeling its the audio drivers. But meh I don't use it anywayz.