Computer Woes

[TheEn|gma]

Truth being told this build has never run right, never; but a few days ago it stopped working altogether.

I'll set the scene, Tuesday this week I booted her up to check the forums and the like before I get to going on with my day off, (I made no hardware or software alterations or installations at this time) I had to take a shower so I turned her off, came back after about half an hour later and turned her on, stepped away to get some breakfast for about 5 minutes then came back

The PC was still on the XP loading screen (not the welcome one), not actually in Windows yet. It must had been sitting there for a good few minutes so I hit up a reboot and left it to run where it churned out some generic blue screen message with the same error code I've seen many times before.

I had to go out anyway so I thought screw it and left it for the time being. After a bit of brainstorming I tried sticking in a new Hard Drive (IDE), installing XP on it and seeing whats what. Funny thing is it worked fine, install went OK (apart from it didn't detect my 250gb SATA drive which was originally in there both in the OS installation and in XP itself). Got into windows installed all my Anti-Virus stuff hit up a reboot to get those working. Then I continued for about half an hour or so downloading and installing some necessary programs. I then after installing those programs decided to go for another reboot to get those working.

It got stuck at XP loading screen again and producing the same BSOD error message. I rebooted a few time but to no avail, on one of the reboots however the OS ran a check for consistency on my 250GB hard drive (which suggests to me that it can in some form detect it) Now normally I'd be working around the clock to get this fixed but its a very strange one and I really don't know where to start.

I have got to stress there were no software or hardware changes made before the problems (which frankly makes it even more confusing for me). I know this is a long post but that just the way it is.

Any help would greatly, greatly appreciated guys.

[megawhompertoo]

Re: Computer Woes

So where are you at with your troubles now?

Have you tried to install windows on the SATA drive?

Is your XP CD scratched badly?

[TheEn|gma]

Re: Computer Woes

So where are you at with your troubles now?

Same original problem, won't get past the XP Loading Screen.

Have you tried to install windows on the SATA drive?

It wasn't even detected after it booted from the XP CD, after these problems developed.

Is your XP CD scratched badly?

As much as any other CD that I've had for a few years.

[Bloodsport]

Re: Computer Woes

I've had a similar problem. I couldn't get XP installed on a certain drive, and after many attempts on another one I tried another CD, and it worked.

Thing is, if XP doesn't copy a certain file which it doesn't think is important during install, it won't tell you. Try a decent XP CD. But it also sounds like your 250GB drive is fooked. Download the low level format program from the HDD manufacturer site (everyone has one).

[bauch5]

Re: Computer Woes

can you get to the system restore files? if so (and if you havent already done this) restore just to check if youve got some virus thats gone and fooked with your critical files. sorry if that seems a bit obvious and if youd already mentioned it and ive forgotten already.

[megawhompertoo]

Re: Computer Woes

It wasn't even detected after it booted from the XP CD, after these problems developed.

To the best of my knowledge, the XP CD isn't supposed to and doesn't natively detect SATA drives. You have to hit...F6 I think to get it to suspend initialization and load SATA (and/or RAID, not that it matters) drivers from your floppy and incorporated into XP.

Still, doesn't explain why your EIDE install is, as suggested above, all forked up. Like ^ said, you could have a defective drive. If you want to try loading XP onto your SATA, here's something I pulled up as a quick ref:

http://www-gatago.com/alt/comp/periphs/mainboard/asus/43272542.html

[camper.]

Re: Computer Woes

Unplug the SATA drive and see if there are any problems then. If so, your southbridge is probably fried = new motherboard/repair. If not, your HDD is the cause. Try resetting your BIOS's CMOS, maybe something made the PCI fequency shoot up? When I do that, my HDD disappears from the BIOS just like yours...

[TheEn|gma]

Re: Computer Woes

XP is already installed on the SATA drive and has been since my last format, I installed XP on the IDE drive, to try and get into the OS and see if I could do anything.

Looking for the drivers now, I recall doing this before when I originally installed XP on my SATA drive, therefore I would have imagined that they would have still been installed but I'll try it anyway.