This morning Windows woke up to complain that C:\windows\system32\pci.sys was missing or corrupt. I confirmed with Oerg and Treeki that it wasn't by doing the md5sum on Linux, and Linux's SMART verifier is saying the drive is healthy (a few bad sectors but I guess that's normal?). I won't be able to try restoring from CD until later tonight, but I think my drive is busted... What's going on here? This wouldn't really be a problem except for some reason, Linux won't connect to anything on my BCM4312-based wireless unless I successfully boot into Windows and reboot. With the OpenWRT drivers it shows connections but fails to connect; with the official Broadcom drivers it shows no connections. What's going on? Thanks.
bad sectors are never normal... and if one happens to be inside file system you're going to have all kind of fun things happen. Have you done CHKDSK C: /F /X /R (from some live CD, such as Hiren's Boot CD) ?
I think he meant what SMART reports as bad sectors, I.e. sectors which data was moved to the spare area, not damaged sectors which data has been rendered unrecoverable. Even in a good state hard disk a few sectors (under 10, much less generally) are bound to be bad, simply because the manufacturing process isn't perfect. The problem is when the bad sector count starts increasing =P
Actually no, a disk verifier never says the drive is "healthy" when at least one bit is not good anymore (I mean the crucial SMART data such as pending sectors, unrecoverable sectors, etc.) ... I think?! You should post a screenshot of that.
ok wtf wired internet doesn't work at all? o_O Oh right I forgot to mention this is a laptop... (Dell Precision M6400) And the CD drive is busted so I can't run any recovery disks off it... can I run the Windows XP recovery disk from an external drive? I'll get a new wireless card in the next few days as well, as per GerbilSoft's suggestion in IRC. It appears I only get a few seconds-a few minutes of wireless on a cold boot directly to Linux. I can post a screenshot of the SMART status when I figure out how to work with Ubuntu's tool :/ Thanks again.
...it appears to be magically working again? I don't understand o_O EDIT ...only for two hours; when I left the room I was in it stopped working :|
Possible power supply/battery issues? I know that's always a thought if I've been dealing with a problem for a while and nothing I throw at it works. A bad power supply can cause weird shit that might even seem like it would be caused by something else.
I don't know. I did switch power adapters and tried without plugging in to no avail, unless the issue is whatever's wrong with my battery (it sticks out somewhat? IDK). The magic two hours where it did work happened when I booted off battery.
It seems to be working again. Cold boot after a few hours of no power from a battery... maybe a cold boot from battery power after several minutes/hours is the ticket? I'm not entirely sure but I'd much like a permanent fix. Before I leave to get to class I could try installing the Broadcom drivers again...
I ordered the card. Until then it looks like wifi will work if I boot on battery at my school, which right now needs a wifi login screen...
Installed the Intel card, and now everything works again Now I just need to see if I can fix Windows with an external CD drive... or should I just pay for a new internal one?