Archived from groups: alt.comp.periphs.mainboard.gigabyte (More info?)

I'm having problems with data corruption after installing TaxCut 2004 on the
following system.

I have had some infrequent and isolated incidents since January.

1. Media Player would generate errors instead of launching
2. Adobe Audition, when opening and playing a project file I created, would
soon lead to system shutdown and system hard drive corruption severe enough
to prevent booting.
3. TaxCut would install and then the events in #2 above would ensue as I
enter my data.
4. For several months, some thumbnails on my F: partition would turn black
and scrolling through them would crash Explorer.exe.
5. Scandisk in Windows 2000 always fails at end of Phase 2, but finds no
errors when scheduled for boot time scan.

I have run MEMTEST86 v3 on multiple overnights with no errors detected.
I have run Western Digital's diagnostics utility and it gave a passing grade
to the hard drive.

I never use "Top Performance" mode on the motherboard BIOS because of
frequent BSODs.
I have verified that all fans are working. Case temp is within safe limits.
CPU temps are safe.
I have checked all power, ribbon and memory slot connetions, cleaning the
DIMM edge connectors and reinstalling them.

For the most part, the system works fine, as I edit video, do 3D animation
rendering, and edit audio and work with PhotoShop and CorelDRAW. The problem
appears when I installed TaxCut, and is repeatable (21 times, so far, over
the past 7 days, with multiple rollbacks via Norton Ghost to get back to
working system).

I have also run System File Checker and found no damaged files that needed
to be replaced.

Rather than spend $2800 on a new system, and rather than frittering away
money on a new hard drive, new RAM and new video card, as a shotgun approach
to guessing which component might be bad, I would like to know if there is
some Gigabyte diagnostic utility that can check the integrity of the system
and spot these problems. There has GOT to be a way to pinpoint where the
problem lies. I've even rolled back to my first Norton Ghost image that I
made right after installing the F10 BIOS modded for RAID support under Win
2K SP4, and even that pre-trouble-era configuration from a year ago would
become rapidly corrupted after installing TaxCut.
I have a mild suspicion it might be due to having replaced the primary HDD
with a 160GB drive from Western Digital. The 120GB Maxtor drive that was in
there just died a month after it was installed (it replaced a 20GB Maxtor
drive that gave me no trouble or corruption). I went out and bought the only
drive our local Circuit City had that was over 40GB--a WD1600JB. But I have
never had a drive that big on F10 BIOS, so I have no idea if the BIOS is
getting confused under certain circumstances, and perhaps writing to sectors
it shouldn't.

Any ideas? I've been working on this since February!

System config:

Gigabyte GA-7DXR (F10 BIOS, modified with Promise latest drivers to allow
Win 2k SP4 to run, as of March 2004)
AMD Athlon XP2400+
512MB Crucial PC2100 DDR SDRAM
VisionTek GeForce3 64MB
Western Digital 160GB 7200rpm ATA100 system drive
2 Maxtor 80GB 7200rpm ATA133 drives in RAID 0 array
Pioneer DVR-A04 DVD writer
Nikon Coolscan 4000ED Film Scanner
TDK 24x10x40x VeloCD-RW writer
3Com 3C905TX 100mb/s NIC
Pyro BasicDV IEEE-1394 Fire Wire interface
Turtle Beach Santa Cruz audio card
Wacom Intuos 9x12 Drawing Tablet
NEC AccuSync 120 monitor @ 2048x1536 32bit color
Windows 2000 Professional, SP4

Archived from groups: alt.comp.periphs.mainboard.gigabyte (More info?)

Mark & Mary Ann Weiss wrote:
> I'm having problems with data corruption after installing TaxCut 2004 on the
> following system.
>
><snipped>

Did I miss the mention of AV/security tools?

What have you used and what was the result?

--

Simon Elliott

Archived from groups: alt.comp.periphs.mainboard.gigabyte (More info?)

I reckon you answered it yourself.
TaxCut 2004 is causing it. Must be a clash there somewhere between that &
either another program or the OS itself. Sounds like your comp is pretty
vital to you so how about you find out the minimum requirements for TaxCut &
get yourself a cheapy laptop slightly more than required?
Do you know anyone who runs that program without problems?
Sorry but I'm not familiar with it.
You did say you have no problems without it didn't you?



"Simon Elliott" <simon@deleteelliott.clara.co.uk> wrote in message
news:1111565179.29006.0@sabbath.news.uk.clara.net...
> Mark & Mary Ann Weiss wrote:
> > I'm having problems with data corruption after installing TaxCut 2004 on
the
> > following system.
> >
> ><snipped>
>
> Did I miss the mention of AV/security tools?
>
> What have you used and what was the result?
>
> --
>
> Simon Elliott

Archived from groups: alt.comp.periphs.mainboard.gigabyte (More info?)

"Mark & Mary Ann Weiss" <mweissX294@earthlink.net> wrote:

>I'm having problems with data corruption after installing TaxCut 2004 on the
>following system.
>
>I have had some infrequent and isolated incidents since January.
>
>1. Media Player would generate errors instead of launching
>2. Adobe Audition, when opening and playing a project file I created, would
>soon lead to system shutdown and system hard drive corruption severe enough
>to prevent booting.
>3. TaxCut would install and then the events in #2 above would ensue as I
>enter my data.
>4. For several months, some thumbnails on my F: partition would turn black
>and scrolling through them would crash Explorer.exe.
>5. Scandisk in Windows 2000 always fails at end of Phase 2, but finds no
>errors when scheduled for boot time scan.
>
>I have run MEMTEST86 v3 on multiple overnights with no errors detected.
>I have run Western Digital's diagnostics utility and it gave a passing grade
>to the hard drive.
>
>I never use "Top Performance" mode on the motherboard BIOS because of
>frequent BSODs.
>I have verified that all fans are working. Case temp is within safe limits.
>CPU temps are safe.
>I have checked all power, ribbon and memory slot connetions, cleaning the
>DIMM edge connectors and reinstalling them.
>
>For the most part, the system works fine, as I edit video, do 3D animation
>rendering, and edit audio and work with PhotoShop and CorelDRAW. The problem
>appears when I installed TaxCut, and is repeatable (21 times, so far, over
>the past 7 days, with multiple rollbacks via Norton Ghost to get back to
>working system).
>
>I have also run System File Checker and found no damaged files that needed
>to be replaced.
>
>Rather than spend $2800 on a new system, and rather than frittering away
>money on a new hard drive, new RAM and new video card, as a shotgun approach
>to guessing which component might be bad, I would like to know if there is
>some Gigabyte diagnostic utility that can check the integrity of the system
>and spot these problems. There has GOT to be a way to pinpoint where the
>problem lies. I've even rolled back to my first Norton Ghost image that I
>made right after installing the F10 BIOS modded for RAID support under Win
>2K SP4, and even that pre-trouble-era configuration from a year ago would
>become rapidly corrupted after installing TaxCut.
>I have a mild suspicion it might be due to having replaced the primary HDD
>with a 160GB drive from Western Digital. The 120GB Maxtor drive that was in
>there just died a month after it was installed (it replaced a 20GB Maxtor
>drive that gave me no trouble or corruption). I went out and bought the only
>drive our local Circuit City had that was over 40GB--a WD1600JB. But I have
>never had a drive that big on F10 BIOS, so I have no idea if the BIOS is
>getting confused under certain circumstances, and perhaps writing to sectors
>it shouldn't.
>
>Any ideas? I've been working on this since February!
>
>System config:
>
>Gigabyte GA-7DXR (F10 BIOS, modified with Promise latest drivers to allow
>Win 2k SP4 to run, as of March 2004)
>AMD Athlon XP2400+
>512MB Crucial PC2100 DDR SDRAM
>VisionTek GeForce3 64MB
>Western Digital 160GB 7200rpm ATA100 system drive
>2 Maxtor 80GB 7200rpm ATA133 drives in RAID 0 array
>Pioneer DVR-A04 DVD writer
>Nikon Coolscan 4000ED Film Scanner
>TDK 24x10x40x VeloCD-RW writer
>3Com 3C905TX 100mb/s NIC
>Pyro BasicDV IEEE-1394 Fire Wire interface
>Turtle Beach Santa Cruz audio card
>Wacom Intuos 9x12 Drawing Tablet
>NEC AccuSync 120 monitor @ 2048x1536 32bit color
>Windows 2000 Professional, SP4
>
>
>
Check http://support.microsoft.com/kb/305098/EN-US/
and pay special attention to the "Status" section and the reference to
the "Resolution" section.

Archived from groups: alt.comp.periphs.mainboard.gigabyte (More info?)

Yeah, it seems like some very uncommon conflict. Perhaps it's SP4? I don't
know.

I can't state with certainty that the system is perfect without TaxCut
installed. I have had some really strange occurances since January.:

Media Player became corrupted in Jan.
In February, Adobe Audition, when playing a project file I created, would
eventually trash the whole system, just like TaxCut does now.
Thumbnail images on the F: partition became black and corrupted since last
summer.
CorelDRAW would not start up a week ago.

Each time something went wrong, I relied upon a Ghost Image from when the
system worked well, to get back up and running.

As long as I abstain from certain activities, like using that corrupt
project file, or installing TaxCut, I can edit video in Premiere or
AfterEffects, do 3D animation and rendering in Maya, edit images in
PhotoShop, build brochures in Quark and layout DVDs in Scenerist with never
a problem. This evening I spent several hours arranging music in Cakewalk
Sonar, again, with no problems. It's really hard to troubleshoot when no
trouble is normally making itself known.

But as soon as I install TaxCut, all hell breaks loose in seconds to
minutes.

I was thinking MAYBE the Gigabyte board doesn't work well with 160GB drives.
Since this appears to be data corruption, I'm leaning toward a drive/BIOS
communication problem. I was hoping someone here could tell me if the 7DXR
F10 BIOS is able to handle 160GB drives. I had no trouble with the Maxtor
120GB drive before this, until it just died one day without warning (infant
mortality--drive was a month old).






"BruceM" <bruce@@hotmail.com> wrote in message
news:424159b2@duster.adelaide.on.net...
> I reckon you answered it yourself.
> TaxCut 2004 is causing it. Must be a clash there somewhere between that &
> either another program or the OS itself. Sounds like your comp is pretty
> vital to you so how about you find out the minimum requirements for TaxCut
&
> get yourself a cheapy laptop slightly more than required?
> Do you know anyone who runs that program without problems?
> Sorry but I'm not familiar with it.
> You did say you have no problems without it didn't you?
>
>
>
> "Simon Elliott" <simon@deleteelliott.clara.co.uk> wrote in message
> news:1111565179.29006.0@sabbath.news.uk.clara.net...
> > Mark & Mary Ann Weiss wrote:
> > > I'm having problems with data corruption after installing TaxCut 2004
on
> the
> > > following system.
> > >
> > ><snipped>
> >
> > Did I miss the mention of AV/security tools?
> >
> > What have you used and what was the result?
> >
> > --
> >
> > Simon Elliott
>
>

Archived from groups: alt.comp.periphs.mainboard.gigabyte (More info?)

> >System config:
> >
> >Gigabyte GA-7DXR (F10 BIOS, modified with Promise latest drivers to
allow
> >Win 2k SP4 to run, as of March 2004)
> >AMD Athlon XP2400+
> >512MB Crucial PC2100 DDR SDRAM
> >VisionTek GeForce3 64MB
> >Western Digital 160GB 7200rpm ATA100 system drive
> >2 Maxtor 80GB 7200rpm ATA133 drives in RAID 0 array
> >Pioneer DVR-A04 DVD writer
> >Nikon Coolscan 4000ED Film Scanner
> >TDK 24x10x40x VeloCD-RW writer
> >3Com 3C905TX 100mb/s NIC
> >Pyro BasicDV IEEE-1394 Fire Wire interface
> >Turtle Beach Santa Cruz audio card
> >Wacom Intuos 9x12 Drawing Tablet
> >NEC AccuSync 120 monitor @ 2048x1536 32bit color
> >Windows 2000 Professional, SP4
> >
> >
> >
> Check http://support.microsoft.com/kb/305098/EN-US/
> and pay special attention to the "Status" section and the reference to
> the "Resolution" section.


This looks like the sort of information I might need. Going to try this now.
Not sure if it matters if all partitions are smaller than 137GB each,
because I have four, totalling 160GB, but it's worth a try. The registry
entry was NOT present in this SP4 installation, which seems odd, given the
article states that it is installed with SP3 (and presumably, is part of SP4
as well).

Going to reboot now and see how things go...

Archived from groups: alt.comp.periphs.mainboard.gigabyte (More info?)

"Mark & Mary Ann Weiss" <mweissX294@earthlink.net> wrote:

>> >System config:
>> >
>> >Gigabyte GA-7DXR (F10 BIOS, modified with Promise latest drivers to
>allow
>> >Win 2k SP4 to run, as of March 2004)
>> >AMD Athlon XP2400+
>> >512MB Crucial PC2100 DDR SDRAM
>> >VisionTek GeForce3 64MB
>> >Western Digital 160GB 7200rpm ATA100 system drive
>> >2 Maxtor 80GB 7200rpm ATA133 drives in RAID 0 array
>> >Pioneer DVR-A04 DVD writer
>> >Nikon Coolscan 4000ED Film Scanner
>> >TDK 24x10x40x VeloCD-RW writer
>> >3Com 3C905TX 100mb/s NIC
>> >Pyro BasicDV IEEE-1394 Fire Wire interface
>> >Turtle Beach Santa Cruz audio card
>> >Wacom Intuos 9x12 Drawing Tablet
>> >NEC AccuSync 120 monitor @ 2048x1536 32bit color
>> >Windows 2000 Professional, SP4
>> >
>> >
>> >
>> Check http://support.microsoft.com/kb/305098/EN-US/
>> and pay special attention to the "Status" section and the reference to
>> the "Resolution" section.
>
>
>This looks like the sort of information I might need. Going to try this now.
>Not sure if it matters if all partitions are smaller than 137GB each,
>because I have four, totalling 160GB, but it's worth a try. The registry
>entry was NOT present in this SP4 installation, which seems odd, given the
>article states that it is installed with SP3 (and presumably, is part of SP4
>as well).
>
>Going to reboot now and see how things go...
>
>
>
Per the "Status"
STATUS
Microsoft has confirmed that this is a problem in the Microsoft
products that are listed at the beginning of this article. This
problem was first corrected in Windows 2000 Service Pack 3.
____Important_____ Although support for 48-bit LBA is included in
Windows 2000 Service Pack 3 (SP3) and later,
___it_ is_ still_ necessary_to_create_the_registry_change_that_is_
described_ in_the_"Resolution"_section_ of_this_ article. ______

I just went down that road when I installed a multi-boot 1T 4-250G
drive RAID array. The only problems were with Win2K.

Archived from groups: alt.comp.periphs.mainboard.gigabyte (More info?)

> >> Check http://support.microsoft.com/kb/305098/EN-US/
> >> and pay special attention to the "Status" section and the reference to
> >> the "Resolution" section.
> >
> >
> >This looks like the sort of information I might need. Going to try this
now.
> >Not sure if it matters if all partitions are smaller than 137GB each,
> >because I have four, totalling 160GB, but it's worth a try. The registry
> >entry was NOT present in this SP4 installation, which seems odd, given
the
> >article states that it is installed with SP3 (and presumably, is part of
SP4
> >as well).
> >
> >Going to reboot now and see how things go...
> >
> >
> >
> Per the "Status"
> STATUS
> Microsoft has confirmed that this is a problem in the Microsoft
> products that are listed at the beginning of this article. This
> problem was first corrected in Windows 2000 Service Pack 3.
> ____Important_____ Although support for 48-bit LBA is included in
> Windows 2000 Service Pack 3 (SP3) and later,
> ___it_ is_ still_ necessary_to_create_the_registry_change_that_is_
> described_ in_the_"Resolution"_section_ of_this_ article. ______
>
> I just went down that road when I installed a multi-boot 1T 4-250G
> drive RAID array. The only problems were with Win2K.
>


Did you experience occasional data corruption? The Microsoft article doesn't
appear to mention what will happen, or what the symptoms will be if 48-bit
LBA isn't enabled in the registry.

What's made this really hard to track down is the fact that I use the system
daily without apparent problems. It is only when I installed the particular
commercial application that things went awry. I had a few narrow incidents
since February too, but they are such 'ordinary' activities, that I can't
see why the 98% of other daily activities I do on this computer don't
trigger a catastrophic failure of the system.

This system also has a RAID 0 array. I have not experienced any corruption
on the array--only on the primary IDE disc, which is the largest physical
disc in the system and contains four partitions. Corruption has been
confined to C: and F: partitions in all instances.

Now, it may or may not be of any technical significance, but I always
install TaxCut on the F: drive. What if the part of the drive it was being
written to was physically past the 137GB location on the platters? That
could explain why apps on the C: drive don't misbehave, and files written to
D: and E: never experienced corruption. Only the files on F: have been
observed to have corruption (the obvious ones being the JPEG images in two
folders having black thumbnail images).

I may do another Norton Ghost backup of this system as it is now, with the
registry entry for 48-bit LBA, then go install TaxCut on here and play with
it for a while and look for signs of corruption. Since I've been able to
repeat the corruption 21 times over that many installations/Ghost restore
cycles, I can be statistically certain if the problem is fixed or not.

At least Scandisk was able to get through all three phases of scanning C:
drive just after I added the registry entry.


--
Take care,

Mark & Mary Ann Weiss

VIDEO PRODUCTION . FILM SCANNING . DVD MASTERING . AUDIO RESTORATION
Hear my Kurzweil Creations at: http://www.dv-clips.com/theater.htm
Business sites at:
www.dv-clips.com
www.mwcomms.com
www.adventuresinanimemusic.com
-

Archived from groups: alt.comp.periphs.mainboard.gigabyte (More info?)

"Mark & Mary Ann Weiss" <mweissX294@earthlink.net> wrote:

>> >> Check http://support.microsoft.com/kb/305098/EN-US/
>> >> and pay special attention to the "Status" section and the reference to
>> >> the "Resolution" section.
>> >
>> >
>> >This looks like the sort of information I might need. Going to try this
>now.
>> >Not sure if it matters if all partitions are smaller than 137GB each,
>> >because I have four, totalling 160GB, but it's worth a try. The registry
>> >entry was NOT present in this SP4 installation, which seems odd, given
>the
>> >article states that it is installed with SP3 (and presumably, is part of
>SP4
>> >as well).
>> >
>> >Going to reboot now and see how things go...
>> >
>> >
>> >
>> Per the "Status"
>> STATUS
>> Microsoft has confirmed that this is a problem in the Microsoft
>> products that are listed at the beginning of this article. This
>> problem was first corrected in Windows 2000 Service Pack 3.
>> ____Important_____ Although support for 48-bit LBA is included in
>> Windows 2000 Service Pack 3 (SP3) and later,
>> ___it_ is_ still_ necessary_to_create_the_registry_change_that_is_
>> described_ in_the_"Resolution"_section_ of_this_ article. ______
>>
>> I just went down that road when I installed a multi-boot 1T 4-250G
>> drive RAID array. The only problems were with Win2K.
>>
>
>
>Did you experience occasional data corruption? The Microsoft article doesn't
>appear to mention what will happen, or what the symptoms will be if 48-bit
>LBA isn't enabled in the registry.
>
>What's made this really hard to track down is the fact that I use the system
>daily without apparent problems. It is only when I installed the particular
>commercial application that things went awry. I had a few narrow incidents
>since February too, but they are such 'ordinary' activities, that I can't
>see why the 98% of other daily activities I do on this computer don't
>trigger a catastrophic failure of the system.
>
>This system also has a RAID 0 array. I have not experienced any corruption
>on the array--only on the primary IDE disc, which is the largest physical
>disc in the system and contains four partitions. Corruption has been
>confined to C: and F: partitions in all instances.
>
>Now, it may or may not be of any technical significance, but I always
>install TaxCut on the F: drive. What if the part of the drive it was being
>written to was physically past the 137GB location on the platters? That
>could explain why apps on the C: drive don't misbehave, and files written to
>D: and E: never experienced corruption. Only the files on F: have been
>observed to have corruption (the obvious ones being the JPEG images in two
>folders having black thumbnail images).
>
>I may do another Norton Ghost backup of this system as it is now, with the
>registry entry for 48-bit LBA, then go install TaxCut on here and play with
>it for a while and look for signs of corruption. Since I've been able to
>repeat the corruption 21 times over that many installations/Ghost restore
>cycles, I can be statistically certain if the problem is fixed or not.
>
>At least Scandisk was able to get through all three phases of scanning C:
>drive just after I added the registry entry.

No, I didn't experience any data corruption because of how I
discovered the problem. I had a dual 2-120G RAID 0 array that I was
upgrading to a 4-250G RAID 0 array. I first copied the 3 system
partitions (Win98SE, WinXP and Win2KServer) and one full large storage
partition from one of the 2-120G RAID arrays to one of the 250G drives
while it was connected to the Primary IDE master connection. Since
the partitions had evolved over time as Win98SE-20G, WinXP-20G, Data
Storage-180G and Win2KServer-20G, this put the Win2KServer partition
past the 137G limit, but since I did all this from WinXP using
Partition Magic, Win2KServer had nothing to do with writing the data.
I then edited the system to boot from the IDE drive to copy everything
back to the 4-250G RAID 0 array, disabled the RAID arrays and booted
from the Primary IDE drive to check system booting and operation. It
worked OK in WinXP and Win98SE but I had problems getting it to boot
into Win2KServer. I re-enabled the two 2-120G RAID arrays and booted
into Win2KServer on the RAID array but could not get Win2KServer to
properly recognize the full size of the 250G IDE drive and read data
in the partition at its end. Even the directory entries were
"corrupted" in reading by Win2KServer. That's when I found the 137G
limit reference. That was the first, (and I hope the LAST) time I
ever ran across a M$ system problem that was not directly addressed in
a patch, but simply made mention of in a KB item as necessary changes
to enable the proper operation of the patch. In going from 120G
drives to 250G drives, I triggered the problem. I was running
Win2KServer SP4 at the time. Nothing was "corrupted" and applying the
registry changes made everything work just fine. I did move the
Win2KServer partition to be the 3rd partition on my new 4-250G RAID 0
array and within the 137G limit, though.