Hey guys, I wonder if I can ask for some technical advice here.

I left my computer on last night, as I usually do, and when I woke up there was a blue screen with the message underneath here. Now, when I start up, it takes a long time to boot, up, then works for a few moments, and then returns to the blue screen.

Anyway, this is the message on the screen...

A problem has been detected and windows has shut down to prevent damage to your computer.

The damage has been caused by the following file: partmgr.sys

page_fault_in_nonpage_area

Down the bottom of the screen there is some more info:

Technical information:
stop: 0x00000050 (0xF9B434AB, ........

partmgr.sys - address F9B434AB base at F9B41000, datestamp ００００００

What version of Windows are you running?

Windows XP

Scavenge a hard drive from a scrap computer. It doesn't have to be modern. Just enough to install a basic Windows 98. Make it the master and set up the original as a slave. Boot the computer with the old reliable 98 which nobody designs viruses for this program anymore. Then try salvaging any worthwhile data, by dragging and dropping onto the master drive. Install the XP into the original, after having totally erased the drive, using the severe option. If this takes, you could use the original drive for storage and the master for your programs

Scavenge a hard drive from a scrap computer. It doesn't have to be modern. Just enough to install a basic Windows 98. Make it the master and set up the original as a slave. Boot the computer with the old reliable 98 which nobody designs viruses for this program anymore. Then try salvaging any worthwhile data, by dragging and dropping onto the master drive. Install the XP into the original, after having totally erased the drive, using the severe option. If this takes, you could use the original drive for storage and the master for your programs

Yes this should work if you do have Win98 to install.

Thanks for the suggestion KLM.

A bloke on Stormfront suggested pretty much the same thing. My computer is a laptop, so I guess I'll need to connect the external HDD to my computer via a USB port.

Thanks for the suggestion KLM.

A bloke on Stormfront suggested pretty much the same thing. My computer is a laptop, so I guess I'll need to connect the external HDD to my computer via a USB port.

Forget doing that thing with Win98, its a waste of time and effort.

Since you say you are running XP all you have to do is get your Windows disk and do a clean new install of XP, except when it prompts you on the blue install screen, DO NOT CHOOSE TO re-FORMAT THE HARDDRIVE.

I did this before, it works like a charm, all of your previous files are accessible, the only difference is that your programs are not keyed into the registry anymore, so you have to reinstall them to make some work properly.

Hi Jozu

You may have figured this out by now, but using Win98 on a separate drive wont work. Unless your XP drive was set up specifically to use FAT32 (the file system used by Win98) then it uses the default (and proprietary) NTFS which can't be read by FAT32.

You can do the same thing just by loading WinXp on a second drive however. The easiest way to do this is to just install Xp on a 2nd drive and make it bootable from the bios. Your computer's bios may not allow USB booting, it depends on how old it is, but you can do it with another drive just by plugging it in to the secondary IDE channel

Durban is right in his post so you might want to follow his suggestions, though as he said, even if you can recover your drive in this manner (there is no guarantee that you can, it depends on how bad the corruption is) you will find all your links trashed. The only thing I disagree with Durban on is that if you have to do this, you should use it only to save important data and then reformat and reinstall the OS from scratch. Trying recover a system with all its links trashed is WAY more trouble than its worth and the system will continue to be unstable anyway.

Before you do that however, you should try to roll back to another restore point. WinXP sets restore points periodically that will allow you to reboot from an earlier, uncorrupted, time. Just keep tapping F8 when you reboot, this will give you a menu that will offer you the option of booting from a restore. Alternately, you can try booting into safe mode and see if that works.

Finally, and this is something that everyone here should heed, you should understand WHY your system crashed as it did. From what you said I strongly suspect that it was heat. Modern HD produce prodigous amounts of heat, enough to give you a good 2nd degree burn if you touch it long enough.

An overheating HD will do exactly what Jozu described. In fact, this is a classic circumstance of this problem. The fact that he says he left it on all night gives it away. Now that it is getting hotter as summer nears, this always becomes a problem because people don't use their air conditioners at this time of the year and HDs heat up due to higher ambient heat. So make sure you have adequate airflow and cooling around your HDs.

Alternately, you can go into your PC's power settings and set your HD to spin down when not in use after a certain amount of time. This may cause responsiveness issues. Up to you.

-Brian

I'm willing to bet you have a bad hard drive. It sounds like it is probably worn out and needs immediate replacement.

Use the manufacturers drive test utility for your hard drive. Typically laptop drives are Toshiba or Hitachi made. Also you can use the EBCD: http://ebcd.pcministry.com/ (you'll have to burn it to CD, use option 7 on boot)

If your drive is bad, but you need files from it, use Knoppix Linux (or BartPE) to copy your files to an external USB drive. Then replace the drive.

If you don't need files from it, then just replace it with a similar model and reinstall your favorite OS. If you do XP, update it asap and use a decent antivirus and firewall.