[jimmydean]

My wifes machine is getting the random blue screen followed by the memory dump. I want to run a scan of the drive and of the memory without loading the OS from a boot cd if possible.

Is there a boot cd with utilities for NTFS out there somewhere? I researched some of the errors I have seen and it points to errors in virtual memory, so either RAM, or drive space being bad. The memory issue is either controller or memory, but I swapped memory and it still happens. Leads me to think controller or drive.

I have done this in the past with Knoppix, but because her box is NTFS, Knoppix can't write to it.

 

[binary visions]

I had this link bookmarked a while back:

http://www.ultimatebootcd.com/

If it's a virtual memory problem it's probably the hard drive. Good luck!

 

[jimmydean]

I tired that, and every time I try to boot, it gets to 20% then says "failed to boot from CD..."

I have burned 2 copies using different ISO tools with the same result. Have you had any luck with it?

 

[binary visions]

No, haven't tried it. Sorry, just was passing on a link I had bookmarked once upon a time. There's a ton of links if you search for NTFS boot disk in Google, though.

 

[stanky_dlx]

We use 2 at work.

ERD Commander & Bart's PE Disk.

ERD works well but cost $. Bart's is free but you'll spend a lot of time configuring it to do what you want it to.

 

[Discostu]

Ultimate Boot CD has always worked great for me.

 

[jimmydean]

I tried a 3rd copy of Ultimate Boot CD last night with the same result. It gets about 1/3 of the way then says "Can't boot from CD".

I was able to run fsck if I loaded X Windows. Not sure why, but rather than running in single user mode without loading X, it would hang about an hour into it. Last night I let Knoppix boot fully, opened a terminal, ran fsck, found a bunch of issues, and am now running it a second time (it re-runs if there are errors fixed).

If all else fails, I will buy a cheap drive off ebay to toss in it then sell the POS on ebay. I'm getting the wife a MacBook Pro anyway, I guess just sooner than later.

 

[Tenchiro]

Throw a second HDD in her PC, install Windows on it and use that to repair the original.

 

[jimmydean]

Sorry, I forgot to mention it's a laptop. Otherwise it would have been much easier to begin with.

It looks like fsck worked the first time, depending on how it goes the secind time, I should be able to reinstall Windows on it, then I'll sell it. It's only a P3 650MHz, but it works for her.