Hard reset - will it kill off my new harddisk?
 

My old laptop has some error in its ram, because it's still PIII, I couldnt find any sdram to replace it. I couldnt afford to buy new laptop either, so I guess I have no choice but to live with this one till I get decent job.

Anyway, problem comes when my winxp got too much BSOD these days, and forcing me to always use the hard reset button. I know this could potentially damage my harddisk, even though speedfan analyzed my harddrive having 96% fitness, I'm still worried. I'm worried that my data (mostly mp3) would be corrupted. It's most unlikely the hdd will fail soon, but it's very annoying to find your random mp3s getting corrupted unexpectedly.

In condition to prevent further damage from hard reset, what should I do after I hard reset my laptop? Must I wait some seconds before I turn it on again, or must I turn it again immediately? Any help would be appreciated.

You should get an external HD to back all of your data up to in case it either A) crashes or B) you get fed up enough to reinstall Windows.

It doesn't really matter. Each power cycle shortens the life of your harddrive.

You should either get some new RAM or find something like badram for windows. badram is a patch for the linux kernel that disables use of particular RAM areas so the faulty parts are not used. That would help in your situation.

My advice is to (as previously stated) back up your stuff either with 1.) DVD's or 2.) an external hard drive.

Yes, continually powering on and off your hard drive WILL shorten it's lifespan after a significant period of time. However, it takes quite a while, and hard drives today are more durable than the yesteryears.

And yes, you should wait to a count of ten I have heard. I am GUESSING that the electronics inside need to lose their charge. Probably when you first turn it on, there is little to no charge inside. It then is fully charged for a second when it gets a sudden rush of power (the initial turn on), but then subsides to 'normal' levels after it gets a continual source of power. However, if you turn it off, and then right back on, it has not gotten rid of the power it originally had AND has to deal with a full rush of power, possibly leading to 'overflow'. Now, this is just a GUESS of what is going on inside, someone with a better understanding of this can probably describe it better.

I would try to etiher 1.) reinstall Windows, 2.) check the RAm (as previously stated) and/or 3.) run some diagnosic tools to find out what is causing it to Blue Screen.

I backup my files periodically but I just want to ensure about this one actually. Thanks for the tips guys!

sorry to bump, but I would like to ask whether it's possible to diagnose the bad part of the ram with certain software. I want to use memtest86, but it seems only testing the ram, and doesnt provide much solution because the bad part would probably still used by the pc.

That's memtest86 - it diagnoses the RAM, telling you which positions are not keeping correct data over time.

What do you expect? memtest86 to automagically repair your memory??
It's in the name memtest86, it's testing your RAM, nothing more nothing less. The only solution left for you is to exchange the faulty memory, since there is no badram patch for windows (I was interested myself, so I looked it up).

Or try to put the faulty memory in the slot which results in the highest linear address and then limit the RAM used by Windows. At least this should be possible by passing boot parameters to the kernel.

I just used it, and wow, I'm surprised, there are about 3000 or more errors in my ram. Since my laptop couldnt use ddr, I have no choice but to stick with this till I could afford new laptop. ;_;

to be honest I'm confused what you meant with this, I'm totally noob for this stuff, is there any good tutorial to show me how to do this?

thanks in advance liquidacid. Now I want to try seagate seatools, I hope this hdd not broken already, because just today, I hard reset it about... 6 times or more (these bsod keep coming, sigh)

Because of the way Windows manages RAM it is not possible to "hide" the bad bits like in Linux. With 3000 (!) errors in your RAM you should throw it away NOW before you corrupt any data on your PC.

BSOD and GPF will be your closest friends until you replace the broken parts.

Not the amount is interesting, but how the errors are distributed in the memory. Do you have two modules installed, or only one?

I assume that the system uses SDRAM-SODIMM (144 pin). I can find a lot of these modules on the german ebay site (I think there are even more on the US homepage). So you can still find replacement RAM.

I want to be honest too. If you haven't understood anything I told you, you should really get some replacement RAM or live on with the permanent risk of loosing your data. I should mention that you're exposed to two types of risk. One is mechanical damage from the frequent power cycles, the other is filesystem corruption from bitrot in your memory. An operating system can just do anything if memory changes zeros to ones and vice versa at random. NTFS is relavitely safe when it comes to system lockups or power outage. But no filesystem is safe from software errors... and bad memory triggers a lot of these.

You can't expect any software which uses memory to work reliable on your system. If you choose to run any kind of harddrive diagnostic software on this system it could report false errors or corrupt the drive even more. If you have any important data on the drive I recommend you back it up now (NOT using the system with the bad memory) and don't use the backup media (if read-write media) with the system.

Additional Spam:
It's just that MS isn't really interested in this feature. You can 'hide' RAM from Windows, but only by telling it that it should only use that much of it. So you can define a maximum amount, but not the exact locations like with the badram patch - where you only loose the bytes that are bad.
So if your error is like in the first 10MB of the module, you only have this one and it has a size of 512MB... you're fucked.

Or switch to linux :D

*Cough* 3000 errors? Ouch. I think it's about time to replace the memory inside.

If you are feeling REALLY antsy, mayhaps you can:

1.) Bring it to a computer repair shop, tell them what you found, and tell them what you want them to do. YOu might also ask your local computer guru's at your high school/college/etc

2.) If they are unable to find the ram you need...buy it, and then bring to the shop following step 1.)

In truth, you may be in luck. If you can pull together about 500 U.S.D., you should be able to grab another laptop (holidays are coming up, and prices for laptops are falling). It won't be anything special, but it will get you by mostly with what you need to do.