Over the past 2 days I've been plagued by BSOD's ranging from the good ole' PAGE FAULT to the nice IRQ to the really nice BAD POOL HEADER. The PAGE FAULT's were coming in droves, and I was starting to wonder if a memory module was going bad. However, Memtest86 disspelled this possibility.
So I started wondering about the HP Bloatware that came with my new printer....but the other two networked computers I had installed the software on worked perfectly....so I put that possibility on the back burner.
Restarted, toggled off the card reader in the BIOS...no luck.
Heat Problem? Nah, nice cool air-conditioned room....clean fans....nah.
Registry problem? Myst 5?? Maybe the Nvidia Forceware 77.70 drivers/Coolbits combination I had installed 3 days before? Possibly....but I was reluctant to Safe Mode and System Restore.
I thought of my hard drives formatted in a RAID 0 array...but all indications (CHKDSK; O&O Defrag) were that they were in perfect working order......until.....after another in a long series of memory dumps.....the array went offline! Suddenly, every time I attempted to reboot, I was prompted to enter the raid utility, or else onto the dreaded "Operating System Not Found" screen.
Exploring the raid utility options, I could see that both 80Gb drives were recognized, but that only one was part of "array 1", while the other was "free". However, interestingly enough if I explored further in the array utility I could see that one drive was recognized as a master disk, while the other had a designation of "?", along with a note that it may be disconnected or bad! I tried to rebuild the array...but the utility revealed this was not an option.
I decided it was time for a screwdriver....but I had run out of orange juice, so a Phillips head would have to do
. I opened up the hard drive panel on the back of the unit and observed that the hard drive connections were secure. After numerous shufflings among the drives and connectors combined with a reboot for every configuration, I concluded that both drives and both connectors were fine!
It's moments like these when you hope you've backed up all of your important data....(and I knew I hadn't).... because I decided it was time to delete the array and recreate it. I chose the delete option, but chose the option to keep the data. Next, I created an array, but chose NOT to initialize. And then I restarted and crossed my fingers.....
The computer booted....it indicated the array was functional, which meant that the drives and raid controller were undamaged....and then that beautiful Windows screen appeared!....followed by my desktop,...and then the BSOD!
I was never happier after seeing a BSOD! I quickly rebooted with F8, and fired up the ole' Flux Capacitor to a restore point on 10/7/2005. In the final analysis, there were no viruses, no hardware problems....BUT....could it be that the Coolbits overclock settings, which were set and tested by the program for my 6800 Go, were maybe a tad too aggressive in combination with 77.70? Could be...but I may never know for sure, because I'm not going there again. Even so, I wonder why my array would get knocked offline.
In the end, I decided to share the experience with you all, especially since all I could think of was an impending RMA nightmare, and if I can save one person from going through THAT, then I've done my good deed for the day.
So I started wondering about the HP Bloatware that came with my new printer....but the other two networked computers I had installed the software on worked perfectly....so I put that possibility on the back burner.
Restarted, toggled off the card reader in the BIOS...no luck.
Heat Problem? Nah, nice cool air-conditioned room....clean fans....nah.
Registry problem? Myst 5?? Maybe the Nvidia Forceware 77.70 drivers/Coolbits combination I had installed 3 days before? Possibly....but I was reluctant to Safe Mode and System Restore.
I thought of my hard drives formatted in a RAID 0 array...but all indications (CHKDSK; O&O Defrag) were that they were in perfect working order......until.....after another in a long series of memory dumps.....the array went offline! Suddenly, every time I attempted to reboot, I was prompted to enter the raid utility, or else onto the dreaded "Operating System Not Found" screen.
Exploring the raid utility options, I could see that both 80Gb drives were recognized, but that only one was part of "array 1", while the other was "free". However, interestingly enough if I explored further in the array utility I could see that one drive was recognized as a master disk, while the other had a designation of "?", along with a note that it may be disconnected or bad! I tried to rebuild the array...but the utility revealed this was not an option.
I decided it was time for a screwdriver....but I had run out of orange juice, so a Phillips head would have to do
. I opened up the hard drive panel on the back of the unit and observed that the hard drive connections were secure. After numerous shufflings among the drives and connectors combined with a reboot for every configuration, I concluded that both drives and both connectors were fine!It's moments like these when you hope you've backed up all of your important data....(and I knew I hadn't).... because I decided it was time to delete the array and recreate it. I chose the delete option, but chose the option to keep the data. Next, I created an array, but chose NOT to initialize. And then I restarted and crossed my fingers.....
The computer booted....it indicated the array was functional, which meant that the drives and raid controller were undamaged....and then that beautiful Windows screen appeared!....followed by my desktop,...and then the BSOD!
I was never happier after seeing a BSOD! I quickly rebooted with F8, and fired up the ole' Flux Capacitor to a restore point on 10/7/2005. In the final analysis, there were no viruses, no hardware problems....BUT....could it be that the Coolbits overclock settings, which were set and tested by the program for my 6800 Go, were maybe a tad too aggressive in combination with 77.70? Could be...but I may never know for sure, because I'm not going there again. Even so, I wonder why my array would get knocked offline.
In the end, I decided to share the experience with you all, especially since all I could think of was an impending RMA nightmare, and if I can save one person from going through THAT, then I've done my good deed for the day.
