HDD Gone?

Mossy Monk

my pc keeps freezing on me lately so i reinstalled windows xp pro to see if that would solve it but the problem persists. at first i thought it may be the windows disc but the same happens with a different disc.

the hdd i have is a Maxtor DiamondMax 10 250GB SATA 16MB 7200RPM.

anyone have any suggestions?

kippy

Have you tried a chkdsk /f ???
Go to run and type that in....it will locate any errors with the HDD....Also might be worth trying to use a RAM checker....to check that there are no errors with your RAM

Mossy Monk

can you recommend a good RAM checker?

Karoma

RAM: memtest

General TS:
Check Device Manager.
Check Event Viewer.
Test in Safe Mode.
Test in Safe Mode without additional hardware.

Mossy Monk

the RAM test program says i need a floppy drive dont have one of them

the event viewer shows lots of errors and warnings (see attachments). dont know if thats normal or not.

the device manager shows that all that needs doing is the usb being upgraded to usb 2. problem there is that i am not able to install sp1 or 2 due to freezing

Mutant_Fruit

memtest is available on a boot CD version too...

Also, (at the risk of hijacking), i'm having the same problems. My computer randomly freezes solid and i can't track down the cause. I'm just burning memtest myself, and i have SiGuardian installed to let me know if there is something wrong iwth the HD, but it's showing up fine at the moment.

I've installed motherboard monitor, and the temps all seem ok. All voltages nice and stable within 5% of nominal.

What else is there to test? I'm hoping to avoid a windows reinstall, as i don't think thats' the problem.

Mossy Monk

just after scanning with MemTest and it found no errors

see attachment

one thing i have noticed is that the pc is on now for quite some time without any freezing. i will try installing sp2 and see what happens

Mossy Monk

so Service Pack 2 installed fine this time but now the pc freezes while booting up. boots fine in safe mode. any ideas? i am ready to throw the whole lot out the window

weeder

try a program called speedfan it might be an overheating problem i had a pc do this before it turns out the fan died

Mossy Monk

i have run the Speed Fan program along with the SIGuardian program and the results are in the attachment. it is all double dutch to me so i dont know if what they say is good or not

so is it all good or should i panic

lomb

without sp2 and auto updates its probably virussed/wormed to bits. a computer gets infected within an hour connected to the internet with no firewall.
reinstall windows and go from there, then update all drivers including graphics driver. should solve problem.

kmb

Hi,Have you tried another power supply?Thats the first thing i iwould try.secondly it could be a faulty componment causing irq/driver problems so take out all unnecessary cards and just have graphics in there with one ram stick and see how it goes.

regards

kieran

Mossy Monk

all seems to be sorted now. what fixed it i dont know but one thing bugs me. why is my c drive listed as removable storage as if it was a usb drive?

Mutant_Fruit

I wouldn't be too happy with the Ultra ATC CRC error rate. Keep an eye on that and see if it changes much. If it does, try setting the DMA mode one notch lower on your HD.

byte

Mossy Monk wrote:

all seems to be sorted now. what fixed it i dont know but one thing bugs me. why is my c drive listed as removable storage as if it was a usb drive?

Same problem with my SATA drive Mossy. It's also listed as a removable drive. Never figured out why.

Juggalo

I had a similar problem to you, I did a complete reformat and install, still didn't fix it. Did all them memory tests, even got spinrite. Still nothing. Started to really get scared when every time I logged in I got a BSOD.

Turns out the cable connecting my hard drive to my motherboard was damaged slightly, got a new one and problem solved.

Mutant_Fruit

I went and changed my IDE cable today (based on what you said), and so far the computer seems rock solid again. My sister was able to play the sims for well over an hour without it crashing and burning!

Here's to hoping that it's fixed now. I'm planning on waiting til my brother goes to america for a holiday before upgrading. I'm going to make him bring me back cheap parts :P