However, I'd Ghost the system ASAP after installing it!

Or better yet, get a copy of Acronis True Image. Ghost ceased to be relevant the moment they were acquired by Symantec; the great bloater/destroyer of utilities.

• Stand-Alone Version (x86)
• Stand-Alone Version (x64)
• Stand-Alone DVD ISO (x86, x64, ia64)
• Stand-Alone Version (ia64)

http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/w.../dd262148.aspx


which one?

Yes

For Iastor.sys to trigger a software bug, as mbpark has defined, something unusual had to occur to 'trigger' the defect. Above might be one ‘unusual’ example. Why unusual? Because laptops do not perform an unexpected power off. When the battery gets too low (based upon system settings), the system does a normal power off. That should not 'trigger' some otherwise hard to locate software fault.

And so this question. Why would a system suddenly power off? Why did the system do perform the normal 'battery is too low' warning to do the normal shutdown because battery is too low? Or does Sony not have this standard function in its BIOS?

TW,

You're asking a consumer electronics company that does not have the emphasis on quality that they did 25 years ago to do so. The batteries in laptops don't last as long as they used to. My wife's lasted all of 2 years on her Dell. This machine was a 2008 purchase.

When a laptop battery dies, it's often too quick for the BIOS to even give the warning.

I use Ghost at work
 

Ghost is one of the few products that Symantec hasn't completely screwed up when they bought it.

I will give you Systemworks, Symantec AV (now Endpoint Protection) and PCAnywhere as examples of how they have really screwed things up, but Ghost actually is not that bad. We use it with Altiris to build our images. Ghost and RDeploy make image deployment really quick!

Looks like it's working. I went to bed after getting the SP2 put on, and connecting it to the interwebz. Jinx was resetting her settings and stuff..


thanks a BUNCH, everybody!

and you didn't even get to use the sledgehammer -

Very impressive!

In an earlier post, lumberjim left SpinRite working. Then discovered it was only on batteries - did not shutdown immediately. That would be more than enough time for the normal shutdown function to see low battery and shutdown the machine.

Batteries in laptops were never intended to portable operation. Their purpose is temporary power - just like a UPS.

Laptop battery live expectancy is 300 cycles. A technology challenge that has major attention - was even a cover story article in the IEEE Spectrum. Getting batteries to 500 cycles is the new challenge.

From what I read, those batteries had sufficient life expectancy to operate the machine so that a normal shutdown could occur. It implies why the failure happened - ie the setting were corrupted or do not exist. Or some other reason for the failure exists. Or combination.

I would be looking viewing those normal shutdown settings. And, due to technical numbers is paragraph three, laptops should shutdown before battery drops below 30%.

(Same reason why the Prius does not let NiMHds drop below 50% charge.)

Tom,

Spinrite usually runs on top of DOS, which is instant.

I've seen batteries go from 50% to 0% in one second. No PC can keep up.

A laptop battery can go through 300 cycles in less than 2 years. After that, the batteries start having major issues.

Batteries in laptops these days have their own little "OS" and RAM to report information such as charge and number of cycles. They can get corrupt too.

The battery crapped out, the laptop did not shut down right, and took the file system with it.

1) All which is relevant to the still unanswered question - why did that failure happen and what should be done to avert it? Not just for lumberjim. For all other laptop users.

Conclusions that imply defective battery replacement is critical to protect disk drive data.

2) I did not find that IASTOR.sys update. How old (how long ago) were those four 'bugs' corrections?

3) This laptop battery is seven plus years old because batteries are not used as the main power source. And why that automatic shutdown should be 30% or higher.

I just want to point out that it is jinx's computer. Mine (HP-- the POS model) had a whole different kind of issue much earlier.

It would not be hard for me to not ever let it run on the battery, I almost never do... but should I get a new one?

And I really do want to send you (and Pete!) some cookies. How about those addresses?

(and jims HP really is a POS, he threatens to throw it at least once a week, usually because it's doing some update or another for long periods of time and/or becomes unresponsive. Takes about 10 minutes to restart. Simply refuses to install new software. And he says "wow, that looks so much better on your your screen" frequently.)