[Thinkpad] Disk I/O Error

Hello,

I have been having quite a few problems lately with my ThinkPad 600,
and I'm looking for some advice - or at least some confirmation that
I'm on the right track.

My hard drive (this is a replacement 20 GB) has been rather noisy - it
almost sounds abrasive at times, with an occasional "click." I have
had a number of "blue screens" - usually happening after substantial HD
activity. There have been two messages in particular:
   Kmode_exception_not_handled ntoskrnl.exe
   STOP: C0000221Unknown_hard_error
   
I should note that this point that all of my data has been successfully
moved to another PC, so at least I'm not in crisis <g>.

After these blue screen errors, I have usually encountered problems
getting the ThinkPad to successfully start up again. I would often get
the same messages noted above. But, if I kept at it, I would
eventually manage to get going again. In a few cases, I used my
Windows 2000 CD to try a repair, which did get me back up. Although I
should say, that on at least one occasion, I noticed the following,
after putting in the CD and booting up:
   Disk I/O error status=00001200 NTDETECT Failed
   
Running out of patience, I finally decided to move my data, and FDISK,
in the event that I have a corrupt install of Windows 2000. I figured,
hey there's no risk, at this point.

I downloaded the Drive Fitness Test software, and it did indicate that
there was a problem with a section of the data, so, knowing that I was
intending to do an FDISK anyway, I decided to erase the data. I then
put the Win 2000 CD in, hoping to do an FDISK, and anything else in
preparation of a new install. On a number of tries, I got the
   Disk I/O error status=00001200 NTDETECT Failed
   
message. On other attempts, the computer would boot and go into the
Win 2000 setup, but stopped at some point, while loading a driver.

So, I'm looking for suggestions. Should I use a dos floppy, boot from
that and try to get things going? I do also have the recovery disk.
Can anyone help with deciphering the Disk I/O message? Does this sound
like HD troubles, or something more sinister?

Thanks for any help you can provide.

 --
 Jeff Miller
 Wooster, OH USA

_______________________________________________
Thinkpad mailing list
Thinkpad@stderr.org
http://stderr.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/thinkpad
Received on Tue May 27 19:54:17 2003