Life sucks, then your hard drive dies.

[Rafe]

EDIT: This thread has become a troubleshooting thread for a computer repair, it is not all about a dead harddrive. please visit the latest post for the most recent activity.

THE STORY:
My mom called me up Sunday night saying that when she turned her computer on, a “non-system disk or disk error” message came up. Thinking that she had left a floppy in the drive, I asked her to remove it. She said there was no floppy and that the computer was singing. She placed the phone next to the computer case and dos speaker was chirping.

It made 3 tones. “duu daa dee” following the third note, the hard drive made an awful grinding noise. This would repeat itself every 15 seconds.

The next morning I go over to see what I can do. I take the hard drive out and slave it to another computer. Even as a slave it still chirps and grinds.

After I pay attention to the boot-screen I noticed that there was no slave drive listed. So, power was getting to the HD and the HD was trying to operate(as far as I gather) but the computer didnÂ’t know that it was there.

THE IMPORTANT PART OF THE STORY:
I put a new hard drive into the system, installed windows and got everything working. I left for a few hours when I came back, for no good reason the computer wouldn't boot. It gets about 3 or 4 seconds into the windows loading screen, then you see a small blip of the “Blue Screen of Death” then the computer restarts.

THE QUESTIONS I HAVE:
1: Does the system have a virus that has stored itself onto the mobo (or any other object)?
A: how can I tell. B: how can I fix it. C: can viruses store themselves in places other than the boot sector on the Hard Drive?

2: Is the mobo (or IDEÂ’s) physically damaged?
A: how can I tell.

THE INFORMATION:
Windows XP Pro SP1
mobo: http://www.msicomputer.com/product/p_spec.asp?model=KT4VL&class=mb
first (dead) Hard Drive: Maxtor 80gb IDE
second (new, but passably broken now) Hard Drive: Western Digital 160gb IDE
CPU: AMD 2400+ (I think, I know its AMD though)

if you need any mmore information please let me know.

pre-thanks for your help in this matter.

 

[Rafe]

any ideas?

 

[FlashDude]

Make sure its not a bum install, And try reformating and installing again. It sounds like driver issues to me, Did you install all the chipset drivers?

 

[Seria]

It sounds like driver issues to me, Did you install all the chipset drivers?

Yes he did, he had everything installed and working perfectly. Then it stopped booting.

We're thinking that the mobo is bad and/or the IDE's are bad.

Would there be any way to tell if there is physical damage that would be causing the HD's to stop responding?

 

[sypher0725]

try running a checkdisk on that drive to check for errors. I personally think the drive is shot. The only way i know to check to see if its physically damaged is doing a low level formatting and if doesnt work then throw it away

 

[Seria]

but he bought the drive 2 days ago, could it be bad alread?

 

[sypher0725]

maybe ESD, anyways if its 2 days old then exchange it

 

[Seria]

thats what I told him to do, but we're going to put new IDE's in and try a re-install.

if that fails we'll exchange the HD...

then if that fails. we'll get a new mobo.

and if that fails, we'll throw the entire system off of a really tall building and get a new system.

and if that fails, ok, i'll shutup now ^-^

 

[Seria]

bad news

Please take a minute and read to the end. its not that boring. I promise. ~_^

here is the update on the situation:

Rafe swapped out the IDE's, re-installed windows.

He messed around with it for a while and didn't have any problems, so he gave it back to his mom.

She wasn't even on it for an hour and it crashed.

So Rafe and I go over and see if we can get it to crash on us.

We try "stress-tests" for almost 2 hours....nothing.... then Rafe's dad called us down to eat. (oh my gosh! i've got to tell you. his dad BBQ'd and it was the best i've ever had! I got a piece of steak that was 1 inch thick and a bit smaller than a CD and I ate the whole thing. OH it was so good. I was so full oh my gosh... anyways, had to tell ya about it ^-^... back to the important stuff.)

after dinner we go back into the office. Rafe turns on the tv and I open spider solitaire.

I am just a few moves away from winning and all of the sudden, the computer locks up... Totally freezes.

Just before Rafe reaches down to power the comp off, we get the blue screen of death. At the bottom of the screen it says something like: “beginning physical memory dump” or something. Then a few seconds later the computer restarts.

So we run to the computer store before they close and we trade the HD.

We get back, format and install windows.

Then he takes me home. . . .

Friday comes along and he calls me up and says that it crashed again. So we go over to his parents house, get the computer and take it back to my place. Later that night he goes out of town for something.

Yesterday I went to the computer store looking for a new mobo. But they don’t sell socket A’s anymore. (lol, it was really funny watching the sales ppl’s walk up the them and say: “Hey guys, I have a really big problem, can you help me?” . . . they give me a funny look like “uummm, yes we do sell colorful mouse pads little girl.” . . . and I say: “I need to replace a motherboard in a system im working on for a friend, where are your motherboards?” hahaha you should have seen their jaws hit the floor.. It was classic... anyways... )
Where was I? Oh yeah, they donÂ’t sell socket AÂ’s

I so start thinking of things we might have missed...


help me out here guys
here are the system specs:

AMD Athlon XP 1800+
MSI KT4V mobo with on board NIC
eGeForce FX5200 vid card
Kingston DDR 512mb
LiteOn cdrom
LiteOn DVD RW combo drive
generic 350W PSU


IÂ’m trying to go down 1 piece at a time to figure out what the problem really is.

here is a list of things weÂ’ve tested
******************
HardDrive: the first HD died, the second HD could have been defective, and its still crashing on this HD.
IDEÂ’s: weÂ’ve changed the IDEÂ’s and it still crashes.
Memory: yesterday I did memtest on it and I let it do about 3 or 4 passes and there where no errors.
******************

I donÂ’t think the vid card could do anything. And I donÂ’t think the CPU itself could do anything. (im talking about having HardDrive related issues. but then that leaves the PSU, and the mobo.

What do you guys think?

 

[FlashDude]

Have you checked your temps? Is the HSF clean?