Having a problem with a cusomter’s systems which have run 2 years without fail, and now, within the last 2 months have crashed. System#1 “crashed” while booting “Unmountable_Boot_Device” (WinXP). Although BIOS would see the drive, nothing would access it. Connected to another system via ext USB enclosure and WinXP choked on it. Booted using PC Check and discovered bad tracks (about 12) near the beginning of the drive. Reformatting didn’t clear these. New drive – reinstalled WinXP. Customer moved their second system to where the first system had been and… it crashed also within 2 days. Same error, same corruption in the same spot on the drive! FixBoot, FixMBR didn’t work. ScanDisk won’t touch the drive. As this location is in a jumble of cables and between a refrigerator, monitor and a couple commercial coffeemakers, I suspected EMI. Placed a clean drive at this location for a couple days and checked. Still clean. No damage detected to the units’ PSUs, RAM or anywhere else but the HD. As this customer leaves their systems running 24/7, and this damage only seems to emerge during boot (where I suspect the damage is), we’re not 100% sure WHEN it actually happened. We suspect about 2 months ago during a power surge along that circuit, but, the system is plugged into a UPS which still seems to be working fine. Anyone heard of this?
