Samsung spinpoint F1 issue

F

Factorxfiles

Limp Gawd
Joined
May 20, 2006
Messages
214
I just got a new samsung spinpoint F1 HD103UJ, which is a sata 2 1TB drive. My motherboard is an ASUS A8N5X as seen in my sig.

I was looking to replace my old IDE 200g drives. I performed a clean format and install of windows XP to the new drive, which was successful until it restarted, and would then say HAL.DLL is missing or corrupt, and not load the new installation.

I believe the issue lies somewhere in that the motherboard only supports SATA 150, and the drive is SATA 300. Samsung provides a utility to set the drive to SATA 150 mode however, which I have run (both utilities, actually, they have two), but it has not resolved the issue. Here are some things I have done to try and resolve the issue:

1. tried another install disk (known good disk, my current install on the old HD used that disk). same exact problem
2. Expanded and copied over manually HAL.DLL off a known good disk, and my current working xp install on the old drive. same message as before
3. completely reformatted (not quick format) and retried several times
4. changed boot disk order in bios from old HD to new, and back. when set to old HD, gives HAL.DLL message, when set to new HD gives all caps "no system disk found" or some such.
5. Removed old HD's and attempted install with only new HD, which gave a message "error loading operating system" after restart, instead of the HAL.DLL message.
6. did a bit of research, realized mobo does not support SATA 2, and ran samsung's utilities, just incase the drive wasn't auto-switching down to SATA 1. (however I am not sure how to check if the drive is in SATA 1 or 2 mode, so I don't know that it worked)
7. Checked the entire drive with HDtune, all clear. shows only one of my old IDE drives as "bootable" under the information tab. Not sure why or what that means.
8. Drank a bunch of everclear and slept.


I am totally out of ideas or reasons why it would not boot. Windows sees the drive just fine, and I am able to read/write from it without any issues from my old installation on the IDE drive. The bios recognizes it just fine.

The only last thing I can think of is that somehow the other drives are screwing with it, since the message did change when they were not present. But I am at a loss as to what to try next. Any assistance would be GREATLY appreciated.

other relevant info: i am on the latest bios for my motherboard, there are no special sata drivers available on asus's website, and google has provided me with no further solutions. I looked, for several hours.
 
First off, I highly recommend replacing that shitty PSU you have. Apevia is well known for making shitty PSUs capable of harming PCs:
Apevia ATX-AS500W-BL
Apevia Warlock Power 900W
XQPack's Included 420W PSU
Aspire Beast 680W Power Supply

The Corsair 400CX is a good replacement for your system.

Second, my hunch is that the PSU damaged that Samsung drive. Could be wrong though. So I recommend the following:
- Download the CD image of Hitachi Drive Fitness Test, burn the ISO file to a CD, and then boot from it, just like you would do with the XP/Vista install CD. Test the hard drive and see if any problems are found. DFT will run on most manufacturers' hard drives. Alternatively, you can use Seagate's SeaTools for DOS to test a Seagate or Maxtor drive. For a Western Digital drive, you could use Data Lifeguard Tools for DOS to test a Western Digital drive.

- Try to use that SATA HDD on another PC.

- Try to use another SATA HDD on your PC.

- Download Memtest86+ v2.11 or whatever the latest version is, unzip it, burn the ISO file to a CD, and then boot from it, just like you would do with the XP/Vista install CD. Let Memtest+ run for at least three hours on each stick of RAM separately as well as test the RAM all together. Go for a full 24 hours if you want to be completely sure that the RAM is not a problem. If you start seeing errors, than your RAM is defective or you have incorrect settings for the RAM.

- Buy and use a digital multi-meter to monitor the voltages coming from the PSU. Follow the instructions for "Using a multi-meter to check voltages":
http://www.bfgpower.com/troubleshooting.html#DMM

- Make sure that the mobo supports 1TB HDDs.
 
A few things possibly worth checking into. Does that mobo require drivers to be loaded for the sata drive to become bootable? Mine did. ( ie press F6 during windows install ) Also, HAL stands for Hardware Abstraction Layer, and if you get it wrong during install, there is no way that I know of to fix it other than a fresh install. My XP Pro wants to always set my Core 2 Duo as a single processor and I have to press F5 during install to choose the multicore HAL. Supposedly theres ways to fix it after install but none worked for me.
 
@danny: My sig was incorrect, I upgraded my PSU a while ago to an Antec Earthwatts 650, and i have checked all voltages in bios and with a multimeter and have found them to be dead on. I ran memtest for a bit over an hour, it passed, I didn't feel more than that was necessary, as I ran it about a month ago as part of my usual maintenence for 12 hours. The ram is solid.

The motherboard supports volumes up to 2tb, double checked that. hadn't thought of it before you mentioned it.

I ran full disk diagnostics on the new drive already, it comes back 100% clean.

soon as my roomy gets off Aion I'll try installing xp to the new drive on his rig, and or booting from his drive in mine.

@jay, i looked into the sata drivers before, there are no special nf4 sata drivers I could locate anywhere. I read a few other people's posts on the same subject indicating that there were none as well, so I have that ruled out.

I did a little looking into HAL.DLL, apparently it is a pretty common failure message with a new install when the MBR is screwed, or when it's trying to read from the wrong drive, etc. Like I said, I've wipe/reloaded a couple of times to the new drive, off two different verified working install disks, one original and one n-lited with some extra drivers and whatnot. I don't believe the failure is actually in a corrupted/missing HAL.DLL, as i have checksummed the one installed to the new drive against the one in my current windows install, they match up.

Question: how would I tell whether the drive was operating in sata 1 or sata 2 mode?
 
I figured it out. Earlier revisions of the spinpoint F1 used a jumper to set the sata mode, and though the utilities they provided claimed to change it, they didn't apparently. I stole a jumper off an old dead hard drive and clicked it in ( ::l: ) which has done the trick, xp booted right through the installation and it now running smooth as butter.
 
Factorxfiles said:
I figured it out. Earlier revisions of the spinpoint F1 used a jumper to set the sata mode, and though the utilities they provided claimed to change it, they didn't apparently. I stole a jumper off an old dead hard drive and clicked it in ( ::l: ) which has done the trick, xp booted right through the installation and it now running smooth as butter.
Click to expand...

LOL!

Nice to see the issue resolved!
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top