Sony Vaio imminent hard drive failure warning for XP

3 files replaced

[Clark]

I'm not a fan of XP. My Boss's computer, a Sony Vaio, crashed. On reboot it says imminent hard drive failure, back up data and replace hard drive. Press F2 to enter setup or F1 to continue.

Being that XP is stupid, you really have to google to find out that scandisk still exists. Running scandisk I was able to get this:

WINDOWS REPLACED BAD CLUSTERS IN FILE \HIBERFIL.SYS OF NAME (NULL)

WINDOWS REPLACED BAD CLUSTERS IN FILE \PROGRAM FILES\SUPPORT.COM\CLIENT\HELP\TGAGENTM.HLP OF NAME (NULL)

WINDOWS REPLACED BAD CLUSTERS IN FILE \WINDOWS\REPAIR\DS_SOFTWARE OF NAME (NULL)

I'm hoping:

A. to find original XP versions of those files
B. to get that stupid message to stop showing up every time the computer is booted.

Other than that, clicking on F1 everything seems to work ok. Has anyone had anything like this happen before? Anyone have an answer for A and/or B?

Thanks.

[mat_bastian]

I was getting the same thing on my viao notebook that I purchased a week ago. Back to the store it went. Not a good inroduction to marvels of mobile computing.

[Clark]

This is a desktop about one year old...

[4crests]

Was getting some similar stuff on my 1 year old Sony Vaio. Picked up Norton Utilities, ran Norton Disk Doctor. Worked great! Can't say that it will work for you, but solved my problems.

[Clark]

Thanks. OK, downloaded the trial version of norton utilities...I'm trying to do a scan while we speak...

Do I need or have a way to run this from the startup or it has to be done through windows?

[4crests]

I think after it was installed, it had an option to run it from the CD. I can't really remember. I only used it once. It fixed my problem and I haven't used it since. However, our two problems could be totally different. So, there is really no way to tell if it's going to work for you.

[2oddSox]

I get quite a lot of those messages in the course of a working month on various different machines (none of them Sony's tho', mostly Compaqs).

As far as getting the message to disappear, more often than not I find flashing the BIOS sometimes does the trick. There are usually recommended BIOS upgrades on the manufacturers site for download or, failing that, the manufacturers knowledgebase is often a good place to start. Chances are if you have the problem (and the HD isn't fried) then others will have had the same issue too.

To cover your own rear end, don't forget to advise your boss to actually back up anything that might be of importance just in case the drive is on it's way out. I took a spanking new machine out of it's box yesterday to find the HD fried. These things do happen.

Good luck,

2odd...