Jump to content

Heads up! Problems people can have with service pack 2 and later


RJARRRPCGP

Recommended Posts

When I installed Service Pack 2 (before Service Pack 3 was official) on an MSI 845 E Max motherboard and Samsung SpinPoint SP0802N HDD, when the Service Pack 2 installer was ready to reboot, then after I rebooted, I then saw a flash of blue and then it rebooted AGAIN after the Windows XP logo and that would repeat.

Service Pack 2 (and possibly later) seemingly gotten confused when it encountered the fact that the HDD is a Samsung.

POSSIBLE CAUSE:

Windows XP installed the wrong disk driver when it noticed the Samsung SpinPoint SP0802N.

--------------------

I NEVER saw this occur with a Maxtor nor a Seagate nor a Western Digital.

Has anyone with a Samsung SpinPoint HDD gotten stuck in a reboot loop after rebooting to complete the service pack 2 installation from Windows XP without a service pack?

Edited by RJARRRPCGP
Link to comment
Share on other sites


Moral of the story:

Installing a service pack over Windows is always a bad idea.

Slipstream next time. But to further diagnose your problem, try getting into the boot selection screen and selecting "disable reboot on system failure" (or something like that), then read the error message you can now see instead of a "flash of blue". To get into that boot selection screen, mash the F8 key just after your BIOS is done and it starts loading Windows. If you miss the first time, hit reset and try again.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Just a quick correction - hard disks are simply leaf node devices on a bus/channel, they don't have drivers themselves.

The disk controller chipset is the device which provides the channel(s) on the given bus, and this is what requires a driver - so the type of disk should make no difference to software changes.

From what I could see, the Samsung SpinPoint SP0802N is a PATA disk, so it's not even a SATA controller problem (which I would have expected as the SATA bus came along after XP appeared).

(The USB root controller is a bit different - it requires a similar driver to enumerate its ports, but then the devices connected to those ports require their own drivers too.)

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Just a quick correction - hard disks are simply leaf node devices on a bus/channel, they don't have drivers themselves.

Totally agreed there... I brushed the drive model note off as "psh, noob assumption". Hard drives (and almost all storage devices for that matter) don't use drivers at all; they, for all intents and purposes, just "exist". The controllers on the other hand, they need some serious drivers. Written well, or go home. In this department, Microsoft default drivers "just make it work" - they don't do it quickly and they don't even do it well, but for the most part, they're reliable... I suggest upgrading to a driver provided by the manufacturer right away, if one isn't already required (like RAID or SATA controllers).

From what I could see, the Samsung SpinPoint SP0802N is a PATA disk

Ah, that reminds me about the potential problem. PATA drives, since they'd been around for darn near 20 years, have relied upon some serious hacks to get data moving as quick as possible - often at the loss of reliability or data integrity. There's very unreliable error checking being done on PATA cables. The "new" 80 conductor (the really thin-wired) cables are actually much, much, much less reliable than the old (but restricted to slower speeds) 40 conductor cables. The 80 conductor cables use solid wires within the cable, which tend to break very easily and cause all sorts of headaches. You *just might* want to try using an old 40 conductor cable, and if the problem isn't fixed, for the sake of science, you should try repeating your installation steps again to see if the problem is solved (since data on the drive was likely corrupted by the cable during installation). I hate those 80 conductor cables. They've been responsible for so many messed up PCs... =\

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I checked the cable and it was fine.

Appears to possibly be that the ID'ing of Samsung HDDs cause Windows to think there's an IO error.

Samsung was NOT a common brand, thus may have ID compatibility problems.

Or compatibility problems with southbridges.

Because that cable was fine afterwards and Windows didn't give an atapi error in the event log. (usual sign of a damaged IDE cable)

Also, it passed a scanning test with MHDD, AFAIK.

Edited by RJARRRPCGP
Link to comment
Share on other sites

Ah, that reminds me about the potential problem. PATA drives, since they'd been around for darn near 20 years, have relied upon some serious hacks to get data moving as quick as possible - often at the loss of reliability or data integrity. There's very unreliable error checking being done on PATA cables. The "new" 80 conductor (the really thin-wired) cables are actually much, much, much less reliable than the old (but restricted to slower speeds) 40 conductor cables. The 80 conductor cables use solid wires within the cable, which tend to break very easily and cause all sorts of headaches. You *just might* want to try using an old 40 conductor cable, and if the problem isn't fixed, for the sake of science, you should try repeating your installation steps again to see if the problem is solved (since data on the drive was likely corrupted by the cable during installation). I hate those 80 conductor cables. They've been responsible for so many messed up PCs... =\

Do you have anything to substantiate that you claim they (PATA & their cables) are "very unreliable" besides your personal experience?

I strictly use PATA drives in all system builds because even though they may be an old interface design, It is also one that is WELL established and WELL supported. Sure the cables may not look pretty, but I'm not going after looks. The only time I've had a problem with a ribbon cable was from one that I took apart the IDC Connector, shortened the cable and re-attached the connector. Other then that, never had a problem with the brand new cables that come with the motherboard and sometimes with the Retail Package IDE Drives. So out of all the systems I've worked on, ribbon cables have never been the reason for messed up PC's!

On the other hand, computers with SATA connections have been a big problem and less reliable in my personal experience!

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Create an account or sign in to comment

You need to be a member in order to leave a comment

Create an account

Sign up for a new account in our community. It's easy!

Register a new account

Sign in

Already have an account? Sign in here.

Sign In Now
  • Recently Browsing   0 members

    • No registered users viewing this page.
×
×
  • Create New...