Corruption on files - any ideas

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albie999

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I am totally confused, so am hoping someone on here can help.

OK, here it goes. I am getting crc corruption errors when trying to unpack .rar files. I thought this was only happening on new files that I have downloaded recently, but also tried to unpack a file that I downloaded a few months ago, but this is also now giving the same problem, even though it was fine when it was first downloaded.

Ok, so now the history. I have recently upgraded my machine with a FoxConn P4M9007MB MB, an Intel E2140 Core Duo, an MSI 8600GT and a 160Gb SATA and 250Gb IDE Drive running Windows XP. The SATA drive is the main drive in the machine, and which is running XP.

My previous hardware was an ECS K7S5A, with an Athlon XP 1900+, Geforce 6600 and the original 250Gb hard drive (where this drive was running XP)

I have run defrags, chkdsks and it has found no problems with the hard drives. I have checked the S.M.A.R.T on the drives, and they are telling me that the drives are in Very Good working order.

I do not believe that is is a prob with the downloads, as I said previous ones from a while ago work fine, and sometimes the same files that I have just downloaded will occasionally unpack.

I have no other problems with the machine at all. The machine is stable, have not had any crashes, and programs and games work all fine.

I am totally confused on what might be happening here.

Help

Steve
 
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kshipper

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Network card would be my guess. Driver trouble? Overheating? Install a 2nd network card (they are very inexpensive) and give that a try.
 
jaguarskx

jaguarskx

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Why would it be the network card? From the way the OP described it, the hard drive is in the PC he is using.
 
jaguarskx

jaguarskx

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To the OP,

Do you still have your old parts? It might sound strange, but it could be the hard drive controller drivers. It's a bit remote, but you seem to have done all the necessary hard drive tests.

Hook up the hard drive back in your old PC and see if you can un-RAR your old files. Then move the hard drive back to your new PC an re-compress them if you want.
 
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kshipper

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It doesn't sound hard drive since his machine is fine in all other ways. Maybe its the RAR program itself. Try downloading Izarc and see if that unpacks them without error.
 
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albie999

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Tried downloading Izarc and it still errors. Really confusing.

Have tried putting the files on both the sata drive and ide drive, and both fail to open.
 
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intelamduser

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Sound like a hardware issue, I would check the memory first. If you are overclocking turn everything back to normal speed.

You may also have a hardware conflict if you just built the systems and could try changing the position of pci cards if you are using any.

If you continue after these items I would turn off the smart disk function. A CRC error ususly means that the disk cannot be read like a scratched cd son something is telling the system the that this is the problem.

I would even try using an external usb drive and see what happens.

Another thought which I have seen happen, are you running any disk emulators? And do all of your drives show up with a letter.
 
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Jeff90

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You know, my first thought was about RAM being faulty, but if all of your other programs run fine, then that would seem incorrect. I would run memtest86+ at http://www.memtest.org. I've never had to use it, but I know that--as the name implies--it tests memory modules. V1.70 would be best. If you have a USB Thumb Drive then get the one labeled "for USB Key," but if not, get the Pre-Compiled Bootable version, then write to a CD and boot off it--I assume you know how to do that. ...Of course a problem may arise since you have to unZip it, but I don't recall you mentioning a problem with zip files. I'm not sure this will help at all, but that's my two cents.
 
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albie999

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The silly thing is that if I download just one file, say an application in a .rar file, I seem to be able to unrar that file. However if I download a file which contains a number of .rar files which when extracted creates the final image (hope that makes sense), then these are the files that seem to be corrupted, or at least are failing the CRC checks.
 
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albie999

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It was a new SATA cable that came with the MB. I presume if the cable was faulty, and that WinRAR is installed on the SATA, then even when trying to unrar files fromthe second IDE drive ... that would cause problems.
 
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aziraphale

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Probably they're already removed but the files are still damaged? Just a thought. Did you try to copy those files to another machine and unpack them there? That would rule this possibility out.
 
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albie999

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Guys, just going to throw in a thought ..... one of the differences with this PC is the Dual Core. WinRAR states that the software is multi-threading, therefore able to use dual core.

The way the files I am trying to unrar are packed, is in sequential order ie. .r01, .r02 etc .. which make up a full file ie APPLICATION.ISO .. so if each processor is actually unpacking one before the other, would this cause CRC errors.

As I said earlier, on a single .rar file, without sequential files .. ie winrar.rar ... I do not get this problem
 
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BustedSony

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Unrarring is one of the best checks for bad memory. It is failing parity since the unrarred file is not matching the archive library, thus it tries to unrar again to a par2.01 etc. The reason that a single Rar passes is that it does not take such a large block of memory, Winrar will use up all the contiguous memory that is needed and is available. Everything else may seem to work, but I guarantee that in this case memtest or Prime95 with FFT of 1024 will show errors. :sweat:
 
Slobogob

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It is quite possible that all the files on your hd are getting slowly corrupted, if what i'm guessing is correct. If you have a partition that you can format on said harddrive, please do so. Format it using NTFS. If the process goes all the way to the end (100%) and then shows an error message that formatting couldn't be completed, your VIA chipset has ruined your data.
Reboot, enter your bios and load the default configuration. Make sure that the option "Plug and Play aware OS" is disabled or says no.
I hope that helps.
 
Slobogob

Slobogob

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It´s your mainboards VIA chipset. There never was a perfect VIA chipset, the best of them were mediocre and the worst of them didn't work at all. I still remember VIA claiming to have the first dual-core compatible chipset and after ASUS manufactured a series of boards and AMD delivered the dual cores they didn't work thanks to an error in the chipset. There are countless of these disasters throughout their history (the most recent one would be the incompatiblities of their southbridge regarding SATA drives). VIA chips are the cheapest ones out there and there is a good reason for that.

You could try to switch the Plug and play option in the bios without formatting, i've never tried that or read about that, but it could work.
In my case i stumbled upon that bug just like you. I had errors in files that i copied over the network, downloaded and even in some i had on my HD from another, older system.
Just like you i started checking my components. Memtest ran fine, checkdisk didn't report anything and even after replacing my network card, files that i copied showed up errors. If i installed a game it most likely crashed right after starting it or somewhere early during playing. If i tried to patch a game the patch installers checked the file versions and hash codes and kept telling me that i had manipulated files and thus updating was not possible. I measured heat of different compontents, reinstalled windows 3 or 4 times etc.

I pinpointed it when i ran Seagates Seatools (their HD diagnostics) and the tool kept saying that my HD was fine but yet failed to do certain tests. I noticed that the addressing range for the clusters was off by a byte and thus concluded that it was probably a chipset failure. Upon searching the web i found that it was a common error with certain via chips. I updated the bios and switched the Plug and Play option. It worked fine. Well, a few weeks later i had some corruption again. It made me kind of angry, but instead of picking up a sledge hammer and getting it on, I checked the bios and thanks to a crash a few days earlier the bios had reset the plug and play option to no and the errors on my HD were back. I switched it back, reformatted and have been happy ever since then.
The nasty thing is, the errors keep stacking. Once a file is written it has a good chance of getting scrambled. Even the OS files get corrupted, especially if you installed patches or service packs after error showed up.

I would do a backup, update the bios and try switching the Plug and play option. If that works the ugly part lies still ahead: Figuring out which file are already corrupted.


 
royalcrown

royalcrown

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Yes, It is probably your VIA chipset, I have an skt600 and when i use the via drivers, all my files I moved were corrupted...ALL of them, just last week, if I stick with the MS drivers it is fine..that is on XP Pro. Same thing happened years ago, but I thought I'd try the new hyperion drivers, same corrupted files, my entire d: drive as soon as I moved them to c:.
 
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onestar

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Via makes some good chipsets....although they also make some bad ones.

You, my friend, seem to have acquired one of the latter. I wonder what quality control VIA is using before they ship these things by the 100,000s?
 
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