CRC errors with large files...

FoxIX said:

I am certainly no expert in this field so forgive me if there is no possiblity of this causing the mentioned issue, but I have also had problems with CRC errors in large files. I just automatically assumed it was something to do with my internet connection as it only happened with files I downloaded. I didn't do anything to try and fix this, and it seems to have gone away.

So, just as a suggestion, could it be because they are downloaded files in the above problem? And if definitely not, would you suggest I follow your instructions throughout this thread myself?

Thanking you in advance.

The days of "bad downloads" are pretty much over. TCP/IP is heavily error checked using both packet level and file level CRC checking. It is not impossible that you downloaded a bad file, but the odds of it are vanishingly small.

If you are getting disk IO errors the first step is to backup your hard disk. Get as much off it as you can.

From the looks of hings both you and the OP should get a technician to run hardware diagnostics on your systems... This could be any number of things --a bad hard disk being the most likely-- and there's not much point messing around endlessly on software when it's the hardware causing all the grief. You need to trust your hardware again before you do much of anything else...

WHS, I used a DVD. Though it appears my problems may be fixed... In searching for solutions to this problem, I exhausted everything shy of replacing hardware. The last thing to try was yanking one of the sticks of RAM so I only had 2GB for the installer to work with. I don't know why this, of all things, worked, but my desktop is booting into a nice fresh install of Win7 right now. I'm quite honestly confused...

baralheia said:

WHS, I used a DVD. Though it appears my problems may be fixed... In searching for solutions to this problem, I exhausted everything shy of replacing hardware. The last thing to try was yanking one of the sticks of RAM so I only had 2GB for the installer to work with. I don't know why this, of all things, worked, but my desktop is booting into a nice fresh install of Win7 right now. I'm quite honestly confused...

So it was a write error to RAM. Hmm, good that you solved it.

The thing is, I don't understand why this problem didn't show up in Memtest86... I ran it for a couple of days straight and it didn't show a single error.

baralheia said:

The thing is, I don't understand why this problem didn't show up in Memtest86... I ran it for a couple of days straight and it didn't show a single error.

It's good that you have found A cause... but it may not be THE cause.

Bad ram will cause corruption on disk and errors in verification... but it is curous why it passed memtest...

In your place, I would still want to have a fill hardware diagnostic on that machine before I trusted it again.

I seem to be having exactly the same sort of problem... Here's my history as to how I arrived at the problem and the steps I have taken to date:

I was running W7 quite happily on this machine until about 3weeks ago.. I was watching a movie and all of a sudden the computer just stopped... no BSofD or warnings - just lock up and then reboot after ~3 seconds!

I discovered that the HDD (a PATA disk - not SATA) had 'expired' - no longer spinning - I tried on different PSU to check - no joy ... RIP HDD - luckily all of my important data is stored on external disks - phew!

So I took another recovered HDD (this time a SATA device) and whapped it in - and tried to install W7... ARRRRRGHHHHH No joy... repeated install failures. I decided to remove the disk, hook it up to another PC via a USB / SATA gizmo and deep formatted it... just to be sure...

Tried to install W7... no joy - several repeated install errors...

OK... I flash the bios to latest version to rule that out - still no W7 success...

I tried various combinations - swapping SATA cables around, changing memory configuration, removing all USB devices - pretty much every combination of configurations possible without adding / changing hardware... I also changed BIOS SATA compatibility settings between LEGACY IDE / NATIVE IDE and the various hardware configs...

All attempts failed until suddenly an install worked!!! Hurray...

... but it was a dog - Windows Explorer was crashing repeatedly, all sorts of shinanigans obviously going on... enough was enough... I convinced myself it was yet another faulty HDD (it had been unused for >18 months - and I cant remember why I 'retired' it before!) and so I promptly went out to buy a new disk for a completely fresh install...

I installed the new disk... Set BIOS to "SATA support to - Native IDE" and bingo... W7 installed and appeared to be working on the first attempt... or so I thought!

It still wasn't right... I also wanted to split the disk to 2 partitions rather than having a single combined system / data disk - so I removed and formatted on my other machine - split to two 250Gb partitions and reinstalled W7....

JOY OF JOYS it worked... Hurray...

I set about working on reinstalling all of my old software - starting with Microsoft Security Essentials (performed a scan on all my disks to be certain of a clean safe system - no bugs reported!) I let W7 doi its thing with updates for a couple of days to be sure everything was as Bill Gates intended - Finally I installed everything else from Office 2007, Corel X5, Dragon Naturally Speaking and a loads more stuff I need for work.... All of which went on without any gripe or moan...

SO the business end was working - and seemed to be working well...

I decided to install some play-things... World of Warcraft first... Fresh download (circa 6.5GB) - click install... half an hour later thing started going south again... Error - XXX.CAB is corrupt and cannot be opened... Damn it... WTF? Erased whole download after 5 /6 failed attempts (each showing a different 'corrupt file' error) - and re-downloaded.... installation errors AGAIN!

I tried all the WOW tech support routes (they blamed the system's Memory) so I ran Prime95 torture test for 3days solid! No errors...

I then tried SiSandra's burn-in test for 24 Hours - again no reported hardware errors... This is a real head scratcher...

I updated all M'Board drivers and did everything I could think of (I get by - i'm no IT wiz kid BTW!)

I got fed up with WOW and tried something different - LOTRO... F**K it! that did the same thing as WOW - install failures galore - citing file corruption as the problem ... (each install attempt failing on a variety of files - not just 1 culprit...)

I deleted the lot and downloaded again to a fresh directory to be sure... still wont install...

By his time i'm beginning to think i'm getting duff downloads - I got totally hacked off - tried installing WOW (again) and hey presto IT WORKED.... and continues to work without problems!?!?!?

Finally, thinking i had nailed the problem, I decided to by a new Winodws LIVE game to try - Dead Rising 2... this one is on a disk NOT downloaded... and F**k me - it wont install - you guessed it - Files (on the DVD) are reported as corrupt and 'installation cannot proceed'.

I am at my wits end with this... Everything else seems to be working well - no instability or unexpected software errors and no reported hardware errors - At this rate I'm going to throw the whole thing in the river and buy a new off the shelf base unit...

The ONLY observation that I can make on this is that the only problems I am having relates to a random selection of [typically compressed] files each >1Gb in size... I have no problems with big files live 1.7GB avi's etc - they work fine as do many big downloads that I have tried...

The other pointers that I have is that the system was working brilliantly on an old fashioned IDE drive... The problems have only arisen when I try W7 on a SATA disk. (I tried to install on a new SATA disk when I got my copy - failed and it went on first time (with zero errors) onto the (now dead) PATA disk that I had)...

(BTW the machine is not, nor has it ever been, overclocked)

Please help... you guys are now my only hope!