If I suddenly disappear in the near future, the next day or so. I'll probably be away until late Thursday or Friday (Aussie time) if I do. My Primary 1TB HDD (C, D & E partitions with my OS installation included) is giving me a lot of trouble and could fail at any moment. I can't replace the drive until Thursday (payday), and will need to get everything reinstalled before I can get back as well.

The drive might survive until Thursday, but I'm not going to hold my breath. Today I backed everything up, so if the drive fails, I'm ready for it.

In the mean time, I shall try and carry on as normal. ;)

I hate it when computer components refuse to play. Oh well.

Mark

---

Ouch, not good, Mark.
Looks like the drive already reports (faulty) stuff via her S.M.A.R.T. diagnose and Windows reads that warning level and stresses the need to backup.
In very, very rare cases this could just be a problem of the cable connecting the drive, but some 98% or more will actually show that you are doing the right thing, plan for a replacement.

So lets hope that you can get behind the error and also that the installation or at least re-injection of your software doesn't take too long.

If you want to check the S.M.A.R.T. status and the actual 'too high' value on that drive, you could use http://hddscan.com/ which will give you a small table with all vital values at a click.
So it just reads what the drive is reporting and shows you some more detail. There's no test running (and stressing) the drive, just a read-out.

Thanks CoolP.

I'll give it a try. :)

Mark

To give you some motivation, YMEN is coming up soon as it seems, so get that thing ready!  :D

And to maybe calm you. The Windows warning comes up when the S.M.A.R.T. trigger parameters are exceeded. That's what it is, a warning and a good point for planning on a new disc, but it does not necessarily mean that you'll lose her in the next second.

This stuff is a self-diagnose way of getting an overview on the health of the drive. If e. g. the spinup time exceeds a certain level, it will warn you because there is a chance that the little motor develops a problem.
Same goes for the amount of faulty 'areas' on the drive. Some are ok and normal, some more trigger the warning, but the rest may well be perfectly ok (to backup).
As said, that tool will show you the 'red level' values, where the Windows popup just gives are general warning.

I have noticed, over the past two weeks, that sometimes my computer paused briefly (about 1/2 to 1 second) then it would be fine for a while. Then it would do it again. It was mainly while playing games on the "E" partition, which is one of the 3 partitions on that disk and the partition where all my games (except FSX) are installed. So although I don't know for sure that the drive will fail, I wouldn't be surprised. No worries for now, I spent the day backing everything up! ;)

Mark

See, FSX does not want that you play other games, Mark. Stop doing this or your hdd will fail.
Told ya!  :o

CoolP wrote on Sep 19^th, 2011 at 3:18pm:

See, FSX does not want that you play other games, Mark. Stop doing this or your hdd will fail. Told ya!  :o

Remember when everybody was saying that Microsoft was messing up installations of competitor's browsers, e.g. Netscape? They're at it again!  :o

And Mark is their first FSX victim! Boeing247, I think where are about to reveal something big here.  :o
I wonder what other games Mark has played there, triggering such violent actions.  :(

CoolP wrote on Sep 20^th, 2011 at 8:34am:

I wonder what other games Mark has played there, triggering such violent actions.  :(

Unreal Tournament (1999 GOTY Edition)
Shipsim Extremes
Trainz 2012
Railworks 2
Far Cry 2
Grand Theft Auto 4 & Episode from Liberty City
COD Modern Warfare, World at War & Modern Warfare 2

Unreal Tournament is my favorite game, after FSX, and when I couldn't play it because of the new nVidia drivers (260.89 - October 2010) for my GTX470, I asked for help and they fixed it up for me. http://forums.nvidia.com/index.php?showtopic=184962  ;D

Wow, great service there!
But, obviously, you can't play the game any longer, Mark. We've now revealed how FSX handles any shifted focus. Sorry.  :-/

Of course, we've also revealed why you are such a friendly guy. It's because all the negative emotions go into that Unreal Tournament game (or GTA 4).  :D

Mark, I'm having troubles, of my own. Look at what happened when I today went to boot up FSX for the first time in months: http://img194.imageshack.us/img194/8186/fsxexebadimage.jpg The thing is, I'm the system admin so I don't know what's up

EDIT: I've already tried a sfc/scannow in command prompt, but to no avail.

Hi fs_addict.

Does the following help?

AcGenral.dll is a Windows file used for application compatibility. "Bad image" often means the file is just corrupt.

Check the C: drive for errors -

http://windows.microsoft.com/en-US/windows7/Check-a-drive-for-errors


That will prompt to schedule the check at restart because you are checking the drive that Windows is installed on.

When it is finished you can check the results by looking in Event Viewer in the Application log for Event ID 1001 from source Wininit.

Then run System File Checker to check Windows files for errors -

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/929833

If those two steps don't work, you can drive copying a version of AcGenral.dll from a Windows 7 computer that is not having the problem and overwriting the version on the problem computer.

I know it refers to Windows 7, it should also work for Vista (not sure which of those two you use). Here is the one for Vista: http://windows.microsoft.com/en-US/windows-vista/Check-your-hard-disk-for-errors

The rest of it can apply to both Vista and Window 7.

Mark

Thanks Mark, I'm on Win 7 so this should work well, otherwise I've got a good friend on Win 7 that I could take the ACGeneral.dll from.

HI all used to have the handle Islander here at Capt Sim but due to Hard Drive melt down the other day had to a complete rebuild of the whole system. Problem was result of new piece of malware that was buried as a guage/dll file in a DC-8 I downloaded from web site (Sorry Capt Sim but we have asked for the DC-8) anyway, the malware went to work after installing the model into FSX and firing up FSX, the usual script request appeared to run (I think guage but not sure) and I complacently allowed it to run and that was that, immediately shut down the PC with a cryptic message at the end. PC would not reboot or operate after that no matter what repairs etc I did. OF note was that Norton did not pick up the malware nor did the remainder of my PC security systems and the Norton emergency boot up and repair disk could not fix the hard drive damage either. I needed to do a complete rebuild from the factory image and lost a lot of stuff when the backup would not read or recover, darn and bugger. So new email account and many days  of dramas recovering program keys etc for various stuff I had installed in FSX. Capt Sim were very helpful and got my new email account etc aligned in rapid time - Thanks heaps.

Guys not sure if it is related, could be, maybe not. But beware! I understand from some other forums that the malware may damage the boot sector or drive read data and it effectively is an on/off loop.

Anyway I am back and simming and FSX is running better than ever which goes to show you can clutter up the system after awhile unintentionally, so from now on software from accredited and trustworthy sources only. ::)

Not a nice thing to have happen CoastalDriver. I had a massive HDD failure about 8 or 9 years ago and lost quit a bit of stuff that I left to long to back up. Fortunately my most important stuff was backed up on CD's. That warning appears on my screen about every 30 minutes and I have noticed that Windows is not responding very well right. FSX works normally, so I did a few small flights yesterday.

Today I get working on replacing the drive and reinstalling A LOT of stuff. Unlike the days of Windows 98 SE, when I backed up everything and then reformatted and reinstalled it all every two months, it's a lot harder with the newer system and large HDD's. I tend to do it once a year.

Mark

I have a new 2TB drive to replace the faulty 1TB drive, Windows 7 is up and running, but I still have much to do. I must have my beloved FSX installed so it will be the next thing to install and setup. All the rest will get done over time, but no big rush to do it all.

No more annoying warning message popping up every 30 minutes or so. So that makes me happy. ;D

Mark

Good im glad i just got a new computer and had te reinstall everything so i feel you  ;)

Thanks John.

Back in the days of Windows 98, I used to back everything up every month and then reformat the drive, a huge 500MB HDD (later on a 1GB HDD ;D), then reinstall everything. It kept my computer in very good order. But with these new huge 1TB or 2TB HDD's it is real PITA to do once every year, let alone once a month! The last time I did it was in late August last year, when I upgraded my computer.

Oh well. At least everything is okay and working great now. It will be a while before everything is back to where it was.

Mark