After transporting my comp to school, I set it up, but it wouldn’t boot (“could not load OS”). Starting in save mode it would hang while loading file ‘agp440.sys’.
Took it back home, tried the Microsoft bug fix suggestion for ‘agp440.sys’ (http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;324764). It didn’t help (safe mode just hung on a different .sys file). I was suspecting some OS files got currupted.
Booted from WinXP cd, pressed ‘R’ and ran chkdsk/r. It took a LONG time, found no errors.
I then reinstalled Windows XP. Windows started up, but it was VERY SLOWWW (it took 20sec for the start menu to open). I restarted, it was better but still very SLOW. I started backing up files to my other HD (transferring a 700MB file to my other HD took about 35min!). Burning a DVD took 2hrs compared to the usually 15min).
I ran hardware diagnostics tools such as PowerMax (both HD’s are Maxtor) and Tuff-Lite but they claimed all was fine! I also ran HDD Regenerator v1.41 which does a physical surface scan (and recovery) for bad sectors. It scanned the entire drive and found no bad sectors!
I ran Defrag which found the HD to be rather fragmented. To Defrag the 80GB drive took about 8hrs! No improvement in symptoms afterwards.
Ran ScanDisk, which went through the first 3 phases but was VERY slow on phase ‘4 out of 5’ (checking file data)…it took 5hrs to finish and found no problems.
I tested all my hardware connections. reconnected CPU, RAM, Video Card, IDE cables, even tried using a different IDE cable…made no difference!
Did a virus scan, nothing.
I think with all the tests I definetly ruled out the possibility of a bad Hard drive or corruption/bad sectors.
I’m running out of ideas!!!
—- My System:
P4 2.0Ghz 512K 400FSB S478
motherboard: ABIT BD7II ATA100
RAM: 512MB PC2100 266Mhz
Video card: ATI Radeon 9600XT
HD1 (OS on this one): MAXTOR 80GB
HD2: MAXTOR 120GB
OS: WinXP SP2 fully updated.
—–
HELP!!!
