like....see how many pushups and sit ups it can do?

Ok. That's make my concern moot.

That'd piss me off, though. If I spend hundreds of dollars on a computer, I want the damn install disk.

bought it at best buy

Doesn't change Sony one bit
 

LJ,

Doesn't change Sony one bit at all.

The HD should be OK. NTFS does get corrupt, sometimes due to bad Intel storage drivers. That was the error you received on it. iaastor.sys is the Intel storage driver.

Restoring, which is a reformat, and then applying SP2, which has a newer version of the driver and its supporting framework, should help.

Thanks,

Mitch

Oh, I was just noting that I bought it at Best Buy because I didn't get any discs with it. I don't know if they cut corners like that so that they can be priced competitively in the big box stores. ...but i suspect it.

It was a LOT of computer for $1100 I think in Sep of 08.

Just what you'd expect from Best Buy
 

LJ,

You expect that when there are 3% margins. I highly recommend getting a copy of Symantec Ghost and making a backup copy of that Sony!

That was explained previously. Some permit burning that disk. Most users do not or ignore that option. Having you burn the disk saves them (ie Sony) a few dollars - proabably less.

As you have seen, essential to recovering a system is to have that disk - or something equivalent. Same disk that better manufacturers locate comprehensive hardware diagnostics.

Formatting is popular. Also called nuke'n pave. Does not make a system any more stable - except if the system is contaminated with malware that security software does not locate. Many do that when normal recovery software is never learned. And when discovering (suspecting) the reason for failure is unimportant.

lumberjim appears to have an intermittent problem as indicated by so many files and index pointer changes that normal should never happen or that are automatically corrected by the filesystem.

Reasons for that intermittent failure still have not been identified. Malware is one possible reason. Doubtful. Most likely reason for such massive corruption is hardware failure. In particular, a intermittent failure. That is what the system logs are for. Intermittent failures are stored in those event logs. Windows works around the failure. Characteristics (especially for intermittent failures) are discovered later by examining those logs.

If that laptop has intermittent hardware failures, critical information(how to avoid failures before failures created problems) may be listed in those logs.

Copying data via Ghost is highly recommended. Nothing says the failure was fixed; only the resulting problem was solved.

How do you feel about Mozy?

Hey Jim/Jinx - I'll make molasses cookies if you come and back-up all my pictures?

TW,

The specific error he was getting pointed to a very specific Intel driver, iaastor.sys. Drivers do cause filesystem corruption as well. This particular one is the Windows device driver for the SATA controller on the motherboard.

Microsoft pushed out a second Service Pack for Vista (and Server 2008) that corrected major bugs in the various subsystems, including TCP/IP and storage.

OEM vendors were not required to ship Vista Service Pack 2, as is usually the case with Microsoft. They require their vendors to ship machines with a new service pack within 30-60 days of its release.

In this case, the machine shipped with SP1. SP2 is an optional update, which IMHO is a really stupid decision on the part of MS!

Here's what's fixed in SP2: http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkId=143706

There are at least 3 hotfixes for NTFS alone, 2 of which can cause corruption, not to mention the fact that if a machine blue-screens, it will take NTFS with it and cause filesystem corruption. NTFS may be a sophisticated file system, but if your device drivers are not 100%, and during a crash dump, when they will not flush out your data the right way, you will have a corrupt file system. Remember that this happens on ALL file systems, and that fsck is the same as chkdsk on Mac OS X, Linux, and BSD.

I had that happen on Christmas Eve with a server that our operations staff decided to shut down using the power button instead of normal methods. It took 5 hours to CHKDSK the volume and bring it back.

You forget that this isn't the NT 4.0 days. Device drivers are incredibly complicated, and I have seen higher-end hardware have corrupt file systems specifically because of bad device drivers. This has happened on Windows, Linux, OS X, and many other OSes.

I don't think it was a physical problem. I think that something got corrupt either due to the machine being shut down improperly, a bad device driver, or both.

I've seen file systems get corrupt on million-dollar IBM z9 mainframes, HP Proliants, Dell servers, and other machines that cost as much as a new car. Many times, it had to do with either a power cut or improper shutdown that caused the file system to have errors, and the device drivers didn't know how to deal with the errors caused.

The only difference is that Lumberjim didn't have 3 IBM techs taking care of his filesystem at 5 AM, and my employer did.

I like Mozy.
 

Mozy is good. GE uses them for their employees' home PCs, and I have an acquaintance who uses them.

Highly recommended.

it seems like I'll lose the recovery partition if I do this. are you sure?

No, the recovery partition stays if you use that to recover. Installing a SP will not overwrite it.

ok. here goes. omg omg omg