Troubleshooting cause of repeated MBR loss

[RobinHewitt]

Hi I have a gateway 450ROG laptop that I bought in 2002. Worked great until about a year ago when it suddenly refused to boot. It would power on then stop just before booting the OS (XP, sp1). I swapped out the harddrive for a clone I'd made a few months before and that booted normally. The data on the old drive were fine, so I presume the MBR had become lost or corrupted. No problem. I copied the data to the other drive, then cloned that drive onto the one that had failed. Both worked fine afterwards.

Now the strange part. This exact scenario has repeated about 8 times since then at increasingly shorter intervals with every drive I've used. It seems to be independent of the drive type or manufacturer. I've experienced it with two 40GB Toshiba drives, with two 80 GB Toshiba drives and with two WD drives. The most recent time was with a drive that I'd used for less than a month. I removed that drive and copied the data from it as usual, but when I went to clone onto it, I found it could no longer be read as an external dirve (i.e., total drive failure).

I presume a hardware problem is causing these failures, but I don't know how to troubleshoot that possibility and can't find any information at all on causes (plenty about restoring the MBR, but I don't need that). Any ideas what might cause this or advice on how to troubleshoot the root problem?

Thanks!

 

[Hefemeister]

Since you have not done a clean install I would suspect some type of malware. Give a run through the guide.
http://www.techist.com/forums/f51/spyware-asylum-osiris-updated-12-13-2009-a-165828/

If not my second suspicion would be a failing hard drive controller on your motherboard.

 

[RobinHewitt]

Thanks for the quick response. How can I determine if the drive controller is failing? Right now, with its current drive, the laptop works fine. Is there any way to tell if the drive controller is failing in a laptop that is working correctly?

 

[Hefemeister]

Well is the malware scans come up clean then that leaves the controller or cable as possible issues.

Running a hard drive utility on a drive that passed on another computer would help to determine if there is a problem. But, I would start with some malware scans.

 

[RobinHewitt]

Both Avast (full scan) and Malware bytes come up clean. Do you feel that's not enough of a check?

 

[Hefemeister]

Should be put post up a hijackthis log here HijackThis Logs (analyze) - Computer Forums just so Osiris can give it a double check.

Hoping for something besides a bad controller as that realistically means it is time for a new laptop.

 

[RobinHewitt]

Ok, thanks very much for your help. I actually did run HijackThis a few days ago but then I discovered I'd have to wait an indefinite amount of time for someone to look at the log. Since my other checks had turned up nothing, I felt discouraged about being left in limbo. But it sounds like there's not much else I can do meanwhile to troubleshoot this.

 

[Hefemeister]

Yep. Osiris is based in the USA so it will be a few hours before he will have a chance to check it for you.

 

[THRiLL KiLL]

HijackThis Logfileauswertung
HiJackThis! Log auto analyzer V2

both sites have an automated log reader, and can identify a good chunk of the stuff from the hijackthis logs