Really confusing problem...disk read error

[Crazydog115]

Alrighty. First of all, I'm very confused.

Now for the problem.

The other day while playing Team Fortress 2, I was experiencing symptoms of a paged pool memory issue, described here: (https://support.steampowered.com/kb_article.php?ref=5034-EIPV-6426)

So I restarted my computer, and got the "A disk read error occured" message.
It didn't go away, so I booted to my XP cd, ran chkdsk, and it got to 23%, and then it said there were unrecoverable errors. I then was going to boot with seatools, but my computer wouldn't recognize my dvd burner, and my bios called it "BzBzBzBzBzBzBzBzBzBzBzBz"
I powered off the system, removed power from the DVD burner, and the computer booted fine. If I plugged the DVD burner it, it wouldn't boot (disk read error). NOTE: The DVD burner has worked fine until this moment. I do not think it's the DVD burner's fault, as you'll understand soon.

Now here's the even more confusing part.
I just was having the problems in Team Fortress 2, so I powered off my system. Lo and behold, I'm getting the disk read error message again.

I'm guessing either:
A) I'm not using enough power, since removing the DVD burner from power last time worked
or
2) My drive is bad

Any ideas? I'll remove my GFX card and boot to see if it could be power, then I'll attempt to run seatools. Here's my system specs:

GIGABYTE GA-P35-DS3L (MoBo)

COOLER MASTER RP-550-PCAR 550W (PSU) (2 12v rails with 16amp on each)

Core 2 Duo E6320 Conroe 1.86GHz (Processor)

G.SKILL 2GB 240-Pin DDR2 800 SDRAM F2-6400CL5D-2GBNQ (RAM)

Sony NEC Optiarc 18X DVD±R DVD Burner AD-7170S-0B (Optical Drive)

BFG nVidia 7950GT OC 256MB GDDR3 (GPU)

no PCI cards
3 SATA drives
2 PATA drives
DVD burne
2 case fans
Mouse
Keyboard

Edit: It seems to be a power problem...
Removing only the auxillury power from my gfx card didn't help.
I tried booting without 2 SATA drives and without 1 PATA drive, and it worked....do I need a new PSU?

Edit again: Now I'm even more confused....I just plugged everything back in, and it booted. So is it a bad drive?

Edit the third: Ran Seatools, all my drives passed the short tests..I'm running the longer ones now.

 

[KSoD]

Hello,

I would run MemTest86.

Memtest86 - Download Page

Test yoru RAM first. If that passes i would then say that it could be a sign of a dying PSU.

Cheers,
Mak

 

[MadRussian]

is the boot order in bios correct? hdd first, cd-rom second, etc. etc.

 

[KSoD]

Hello,

In Most cases you want to have the CD ROM first. So that if you want to boot with a LiveCD or something liek a Windows CD you can boot without having to go back into the BIOS everytime.

Having the HDD first is only the default on prebuilt machines that already have a OS isntalled.

Cheers,
Mak

 

[Crazydog115]

When I rebooted my computer again today, I got the error. I ran memtest, it found no errors. After running memtest, the computer booted normally.

Could my hard drive be getting too hot?

 

[KSoD]

Hello,

Yes that could be a issue. Try seeing if CoreTemp will run for you.

Cheers,
Mak

 

[[t..o..m]]

Definitely could be a bad hard drive. If you ran disk check and it couldn't get past 29% or whatever then you definitely have a problem with it.

Might need replacing. Also is the one you have now really hot to touch? Thats what I found when mine was near death

 

[Crazydog115]

Four of my drives are right next to each other and they are all ~43ËšC, and my fifth one, which is isolated is only at 34ËšC. Should I swap positions of the two drives so that the OS one is isolated and 10Ëš cooler?