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| About this blog: Computers hate me. They really do. Every time I try to do something unusual like add new hardware, something is guaranteed to go wrong. I decided to start writing about my constant problems so that someone else might benefit from my experiences - or at least laugh at them! |
Woken up by a phone call at 1am I went into the computer room to look up the caller ID number on Google, so I could figure out if it was a business that I could call back and have a grumble at. (If it's a teen girl secretly calling her boyfriend then I don't really want to wake the rest of the family by calling the number back directly. :-D )
This is what greeted me when I switched my screen on:
I recently changed XP SP2 to not restart on a fatal error so I thought this was one of its panics. I did think it was a little odd because normally Windows errors are a lot more verbose, but still without really telling you much. By chance when cloning the drive (just to be safe) I noticed that this exact string appears very early in the data on disk, as part of the low level boot loader. So it seems likely my computer did reboot for some reason, then failed at a very early part of the boot stage.
A short then extended drive test passed with no errors. After that, a peek inside the case revealed I have one of the dreaded "COMAX" SATA cables connected to the drive. I also noticed the UDMA CRC Error Count SMART value has increased, which means a communication problem between the drive electronics and the motherboard SATA controller (not a mechanical error). Stupid crappy cables. I tried to buy some of the yellow Gigabyte type the other day but the store only had the red COMAX type. Glad I didn't waste my money...
I had a lot of problems with Intel Matrix RAID declaring that drives had failed (with no further detail provided), then subsequent testing showed they were fine. I bet it was the cables that caused all of those issues. The only question is, if they're really that bad then why isn't anyone else having problems? They've been supplied with every ASUS motherboard I've purchased so they're not exactly an obscure product.
I can't wait to buy a bunch of the yellow cables and get rid of the COMAX ones for good.
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