More Awesome Than You!

I'm having a problem with my downloads in my game. It started today when I started up Clean Installer to scan my downloads folder to sort my files since I'm going to get rid of some of my older things. About 5 seconds into the scanning, I got a pop-up that said Data Error Cyclic Redundancy Check with a bunch of stuff that I don't understand written below it. And if I try to copy my downloads folder to another location, I get either a CRC error or an error about cannot read from source. My brother thought it might be because I needed to defrag, even though Windows was just installed about 2 weeks ago, so I did that, but it didn't work. I also can't run Bodyshop. I'm hoping it's not a Windows problem because Windows ended up getting corrupted and I had to reformat and reinstall it just 2 weeks ago, and my brother thinks it might be a problem with my hard drive, which I'm also hoping isn't the problem. Anyone have any ideas of what I could try or any way to figure out what the problem is for sure? I really don't want to delete my downloads folder. Here are my computer specs:

Windows XP Home
AMD Athlon 64 X2 3800+
2 GB RAM
ATI Radeon x1900 512mb

My amateur, totally non informed advice.  Try running a chkdsk on your hard drive.  Seems like something coulda got fux0red.  Worse case scenario, you may have to reformat (or if you're drive is really fucked, have to buy a new HD altogether). :-\


Ste

Yes, the fact that you appear to be having "read from source" difficulties when you are not in the game itself suggests that this is a broader computer problem, rather than specifically game related.  Run chkdsk and other hardware test utilities to ensure that your HD is OK. 

You could try defragging - it can't hurt, and would possibly highlight and/or mark HD sectors that might be corrupted or damaged.

I think syberspunk's suggestion is a good one.  The only time I've run into that error is back in the TS1 days when someone was trying to install from a dirty or damaged disk.  If it's an issue with your hard drive, I hope it's something chkdsk can fix.

If you've never run chkdsk before:  There may be other, more "modern" ways of doing it, but this is how I always do it:

Go to run and enter cmd to get the C: prompt.  Type in and enter "chkdsk c: /F"  (no quotes).  The "/F" part is the part that tells it to fix any errors it finds.  At some point it tells you that it can't run because files are in use and will ask you if you want it to run next time you boot up.  Say yes and restart.  Depending on how big your drive is and how much stuff you have on it, it may take awhile to run.

Well, I ran chkdsk and while it did find several problems, I'm still having troubles with moving files. So apparently it is a problem with my hard drive. :'( I just bought the hard drive in July, so I'm going to see if I can get a replacement. In the meantime, I do have a second hard drive I can install Windows on, so my brother's going to switch them around. At least I can use Knoppix to save my files from my hard drive so I won't lose everything.

I second the suggestion that you do a defrag of the drive.   After you've saved the files you wish to preserve. 

I did defrag, and unfortunately, that seemed to make the problem worse. Now I can't open any of my programs except for Firefox, and my computer keeps freezing if I try to do anything with any files. My brother had a hard drive fail on him before and the same thing happened to him, so I'm going to try and see if Western Digital will honor my warranty on my hard drive. I've had trouble with them before, but hopefully since I've only had this hard drive since July 15th, they'll let me send it back for a new one.

Yup.  Sounds like a hard drive problem to me.  If it's under warranty, hopefully you won't have too much trouble getting a replacement.  The main bugger is having to rebuild the system again.

Aren't you glad we helped "find" the problem?  ;D