Defrag Error after running ADD

Got a laptop problem after running ADD v8. The defrag no longer works properly, and I need some help/advice. Laptop always been well-looked after. Firewall, AVG, ad-aware, spybot, crapcleaner etc. Pretty tidy.

Win2000, 20 Gb HDD, 1 partition C:, free space 13Gb.

First off, used ATI v9 to image C: into an 11gb image on External Hard Drive back-up location. Also moved all mp3 files from C: to EDD.

The partitioning went fine and I went to this config :
C: 6gb, free 2gb, % free 33%, holding OS
E: 1gb, free 0.5gb, % free 50%, holding data
F: 12gb, free 3.3gb, % free 27%, holding mp3 files

I then did 3 things:
(1) moved my personal folder into E: by right-clicking My Documents in Win Explorer and changing the Target Folder Location.
(2) moved my Favourites folder into E:, and also changed reg key 'Favourites' in HKEY_CURRENT_USER/Software/Microsoft/Windows/CurrentVersion/Explorer/userShellFolders. Saw at the same time that 'My Pictures' and 'Personal' had their reg key changed due to (1) above.
(3) copied mp3 files from EDD to F:

Then imaged C: and E: to my EDD. Messed up here tho, cos due to quota location on my BackUpLocation, the full 11gb image of the original C: was deleted. So that doesn't seem to be available anymore.

Then I decided to defrag all 3 partitions, and reimage them. E: and F: defragged fine, but C: will now longer defrag on either of my 2 defrag apps. Never had any prob with defrag before.

Win2000 defrag mmc.exe fails everytime with : "dfrgfat.exe : instruction at '0x77fcaff8' referenced memory at '0x00000000'. Memory could not be 'written'." Then says Engine Connection Lost.
The error in DrWtson.log says “000005 Access Violation”.

defragNT fails with a message : "defragment stopped at users request"

I have tried both in Safe Mode. Same problems.

chkdsk sometimes shows problems with the file system, sometimes not.
Doesn't matter if i run chkdsk / f or Norton Disk Doctor from boot disk. Says errors are cleaned up, but then they eventually reappear (but not immediately on reboot, can't figure out why or when).

Have run the HDAT2 application from boot disk, and this seems to show some errors on C: for the file system under BOOT, TABLES and DIR. But Disk Doctor says the file system is generally Ok.

Aside from defrag, all seems fine. Just don't know what my next step should be. Do I reverse everything, and unpartition back to my original config? But what if defrag still doesn't work? If u got down here, thanks for reading.

 

jonnygold:

It sounds to me like you have some kind of disk problem going on. Do you have a Windows CD? I would suggest the following if you do. First, back up the partition contents of your C: partition using True Image. Second, boot your PC from the Windows CD and use it to first delete the C: partition and then to do a slow format of the partition. After the format completes, stop the installer so that it doesn't go any further. Finally, restore the C: partition from your TrueImage backup.

The idea here is to get the format command to map out any bad or marginal sectors on the drive.

If you have any drive analysis tools (for example, PC Doctor or SpinRite) then you could also use these to do a careful check of your disk.

This is a long shot, but you could also try running Memtest86 to do a thorough check of your RAM.

 

Mark,

Won't the partition being removed and recreated with the TI image restoration remove any bad sector mappings?

On a drive I use for testing (that has a bad sector), when I removed the partition and recreated it, the bad sector was gone. It didn't show when chkdsk was run. I ran chkdsk /r on it and it found the bad sector and marked it again.

Does the same thing happen with TI or does TI keep existing bad sector mappings?

 

Paul:

There have been several posts on the TI forum about making images of partitions that contain a bad sector, and I'm still confused about how TI reacts to those situations.

Using your experience as an example, maybe all that jonnygold needs to do is to run chkdsk /r. I note that in his original post he ran chkdsk /f, which does not locate or fix bad sectors.

 

Thanks 4 replies, guys. It's this kind of intermittent behaviour that bugs me:

start up PC, run CHKDSK – no errors
restart and boot into cd, run PC Doctor and Disk Doctor – no errors
reboot into windows, run CHKDSK – File system has errors
reboot into windows with CHKDSK / R scheduled – no errors
defrag still no good even after CHKDSK / R
run CHKDSK after defrag falls over – no errors

I'm away for a few days now, but have access to SpinRite and will run that. Did run MemTest, that seems Ok.

If nothing else shows, then will try the delete c: partition that KOlo suggests. Is that straightforward? (never used the WindowsCd). How can you format the partition if it has been deleted ? (excuse my stupidity). I guess the worst case here is I end up back where I started.

 

To do this you would first delete the partition and then create a new partition, then format the new partition. But I'm not sure that this is worth trying since it will probably only accomplish what chkdsk /r does. At this point I think that one of two things are going on:

1. The image file that you restored from had something wrong with a Windows DLL or other file needed to run the defragmenters. At first I dismissed this idea because you said that two different defragmenters had problems running, but what if they share a common DLL?

2. There really is a bad spot on your disk that is marginal. Sometimes it reads correctly; sometimes not.

If it is #1 then you would need to find and fix the bad system file. I don't know about Windows 2000, but XP has a system file check routine that can be used to check Windows system files -- run "sfc /scannow". Also on XP you can do a repair install; again I'm not sure if 2000 has this capability.

If it is #2 then running SpinRite is probably your best bet, short of getting a new hard disk. If you have a spare disk lying around you could try restoring your image to it to see if the problem is transferred to the new disk; just be sure that when you boot up for the first time that you ONLY have the new disk attached and have removed the old disk.

 

Hi Mark,

It's my understanding that, to prevent TI rewriting the bad sectors, you need to resize the partition(s) when carring out the restore.

Regards

Menorcaman

 

An update (updates are always good ).

Ran 5 passes of SpinRite over a couple of days, no bad sectors or other problems. Also tried "sfc / scannow" which did (seem to) replace a few DLLs, but w2k defrag still not resurrected.

Eventually i have installed JkDefrag, which although it uses the Windows defrag APIs, has run fine, and so that's an Ok workaround. Still have the initial problem with the w2k defrag though, and a bit concerned that there may be other problems lurking (there's no smoke without fire).

guess the moral here is to make doubly sure that you make (and keep ) an initial image before partitioning. I presume ADD caused this issue during the partitioning process, but I don't know why.

 

Since you've ruled out your disk as the cause then it is probably a corrupted Windows file, and one that was not checked by the System File Check (sfc). Perhaps you could try replacing dfrgfat.exe and defragNT.exe to see if it is one of those. But at least you have a workaround.