OK, so after further googling, it appears that the "atapi.sys" error with
windows can be caused by faulty memory.
Will Memtest86 check for faulty memory?
-Alasdair-
On 12/5/06, Alasdair Ross <alasdair.ross@???> wrote:
>
> Hello,
>
> So, it's the night before I have to give a presentation (which I was
> working on) and the Hard Drive on my laptop appears to have decided that now
> is a good time to die. I have an Advent 7027 running Windows XP SP1 and
> Kubuntu 6.06 in dual boot.
> The symptoms under windows are random BSODs (with errors such as
> "Unknown Hard Error" and "Kernel_Data_ Inpage_Error" and references to
> atapi.sys) and the system locks up at random intervals after increasingly
> short periods having booted up.
> The problems first occurred under Windows however, when I tried booting
> Linux it just locked up. The HDD light stays on and it sounds like it's
> doing something, but it doesn't get anywhere and requires a cold restart.
>
> My questions are:
> 1. What tools can I use to determine if it is a faulty HDD?
>
> 2. If I were to purchase a new HDD (most likely bigger than my current
> one), and assuming I can still read the old disk, could I copy everything
> currently on the old disk onto the new one in such a way that I could just
> swap the new one in and boot straight away without losing data or partition
> info? (Could I dd the old disk to the new disk and then use a tool to
> resize the partitions to fill the empty space on the new disk?).
>
> I'm quite out of my depth here but I'm willing to give just about
> anything a go. I would like to image the old drive onto the new one as I
> only have the system restore disk for windows so reinstalling is not
> possible. Unfortunately, I still haven't been able to set up the VPN
> connections to my university under Linux so it is not yet possible for me to
> drop Windows completely (although rest assured, I am seriously considering
> going "Free" with my next PC purchase).
>
> Best Regards,
> -Alasdair-
>
> .P.S.: Sorry for the length and amount of rambling, it's late and as you
> can tell I'm a little stressed
>
