W98SE bad sector bug? \ VOGONS

W98SE bad sector bug?

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First post, by pewpewpew

Posted on 2011-07-25, 03:45

pewpewpew Offline

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This one is new to me. Here's the only information I turned up:

----
Maximum PC feb 2004 - The Latest on the IBM 75GXP Lawsuit

"One issue never actually resolved in the documents is the actual cause
of the problem. Some of the problems stemmed from a bug in Windows 98
that created a false bad sector when the os shut down before the write
cache in the hard drive could be flushed."
----
link:
http://books.google.com/books?id=NwIAAAAAMBAJ … ved=0CBMQ6AEwAA

That sounds quite like what happened. I had a full lockup crash. On reboot I got the 'you did not shut down properly', followed by scandisk.

Scandisk marked a bunch of bad sectors, and fixed things by wiping out quite a number of files. Other utilities said the drive was fine - no bad sectors. Eventually I just repartitioned & refromatted, and ran scandisk again. This time got no bad sectors.

I do appreciate that crashes and delays are part of the sport with 98, but I'd like to avoid hitting this one again. Does anyone have insightful experience with false bad sectors? As said, I hadn't heard of it before.

FWIW, board is A7V133 rev1.04, and the drive is a secondary 80GB Maxtor 6Y080L0. It held the game that was booting when things crashed.

Crash was caused by me trying to close something else while the game splash screen was up. I should know better. Forgot I wasn't in Linux.

Aside from just not doing something so silly again, all I can think one could do is toggle 'Disable write-behind caching for all drives'. That's under System Properties > File System Properties > Troubleshooting

But I think that's really just for devs, not for normal use. It would carry a performance hit too.

Reply 1 of 7, by TheMAN

Posted on 2011-07-25, 04:18

TheMAN Offline

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I think the write caching bug in windows affected only original 98, not SE

is there a firmware update for the deathstar?

disable ACPI if you don't want the system to auto turn off... leave it to legacy APM mode and it'll give you the "safe to shut down computer' screen so you can manually turn it off

Reply 2 of 7, by pewpewpew

Posted on 2011-07-25, 05:17

pewpewpew Offline

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I don't have a Deskstar - that was simply the only reference to false bad sectors with 98 I could find. I've got the Maxtor listed.

Does shutdown management come into this somehow? This was a lockup crash; frozen screen, no mouse, no keyboard. Had to hit Reset.

Reply 3 of 7, by TheMAN

Posted on 2011-07-25, 08:09

TheMAN Offline

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it shouldn't have anything to do with it... all it should've did was get file system corruption at best, not hard errors (bad sectors)
hard lockups are signs of hardware failure... and I'm not surprised the maxtor has bad sectors... maxtors ALWAYS were notorious for unreliable cheap hard drives

the best thing to do is just use a different hard drive... WD, seagate, or some of the deskstars are good drives... if you insist on using the maxtor, I suggest getting a UBCD and using one of the maxtor utils in there to do a low level drive test... it will allow marking sectors bad and mapping any spare sectors for use

scandisk can only do so much

Reply 4 of 7, by pewpewpew

Posted on 2011-07-25, 09:01

pewpewpew Offline

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Thanks.

The Maxtor does not have bad sectors. After the crash, scandisk reported bad sectors, but non-windows utilities did not report bad sectors. After repartitioning and reformatting, scandisk did not report bad sectors either. The bad sectors were a false report by scandisk.

Article above mentions "a bug in Windows 98 that created a false bad sector".

Since that sounds like the same thing, I'm trying to find more info on this bug.

And yup, I've certainly had Maxtors go west. Won't be surprised when this one joins them. SMART says everything is rosy. Will look into checking with with Maxtor utils tomorrow. Thanks for the tip.

Totally aside, I've just put an ATI 9600XT in the box. Does anyone have a link to a user manual? ATI doesn't anymore. I'd like to know more about the 7-pin S-Video it has.

Reply 5 of 7, by TheMAN

Posted on 2011-07-25, 11:26

TheMAN Offline

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let me ask you again... are you using 98 original or SE?
get SE and install all updates

I remember there was an update to fix various shutdown bugs... forgot which... it's been many years and I just don't really care these days 😀

Reply 6 of 7, by swaaye

Posted on 2011-07-25, 14:29

swaaye Offline

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there is a hotfix that adds a shutdown delay to 98se.

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/273017

Reply 7 of 7, by pewpewpew

Posted on 2011-07-25, 23:05

pewpewpew Offline

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Sorry, TheMAN. I thought that was a remark, not a question. This machine is W98SE with Unofficial SP 2.1a.

swaaye - I can't find a proper list of contents of 2.1a, but I do have Ifsmgr.vxd v4.10.2225 & Scsiport.pdr v4.10.0.2224, so it does looks like I've got the hotfix linked.

Edit: drive checks fine with Maxtor PowerMax 4.23

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