Hard Drive, Mobo, or OS going bad? Help me decide!

[vikenk]

Hi all,

Let me start my saying that all these problems started just after I installed Diskeeper Pro ver.8. I'm not sure if it's coincidence or not....

This is what I have: Comaq EVO: P4/1.8Ghz, dual HDD, 768 MB RAM, nVidia GF4 Ti-4200, CD-RW, and DVD ROM. Win XP Pro

My system keeps locking up during large file transfers. At first, I thought it was my secondary drive but now I think it's my main HDD, but I'm not sure.

Every time I copy large amounts of files TO my C: drive FROM any source (second HDD, laptop on network, cd ROM) the system locks up completely and the HDD light drive stays on all the time. Even if I copy large blocks of files WITHIN the C: drive, the system locks up.

I can copy files FROM the C: drive to other drives and to my laptop on the network with no problem and no lockups, but I can't copy TO the C: drive.

I'm leaning towards the hard drive as the problem, but I wonder if it could be the mobo or even the operating system. Any ideas? Thanks

 

[Apokalipse]

if diskkeeper is still installed after the restore I reccomend uninstalling it and see if it still has probs

 

[vikenk]

Thanks for the replies!

I finally got everything going. I *think* the problem was a corrupted BIOS. To make a long story short: I had to reinstall the OS, but it kept on locking up during the step "LOADING DRVINFO.INF". No matter what I tried, I could not get the OS to load on EITHER hard drive (I thought the C: drive was my problem).

I tried removing and shuffling around RAM modules, but that didn't work. I also reseated the cables, but that didn't work. Finally, I saw the CMOS reset button on the Mobo. I reset the CMOS and this time, the OS started installing. I got XP up and running and started copying (restoring) all my stuff and so far, I've had no problems with lockups. I even installed Diskeeper without a problem (although I did set a restore point first).

So....how the BIOS got corrupted in the first place, I have no idea.

Viken Karaguesian

 

[vikenk]

Yeah, MicroBell, interesting is the word! Although things seem to be going better, I still can't make sense of the whole process.

Here's another wierd thing: Originally, I set out to do a System Restore but my system locked up about 85% of the way through. Of course, my system wouldn't reboot afterwards. After having lockup problems with the XP boot disk, I got the only thing I could find: a Windows 95 boot disk!

After booting with the Win95 boot disk, I did a FORMAT C command. BUT....it actually formatted D!! (I have two HDD's, 20GB "C" drive and 15GB "D" drive). It said "formatting 15GB partition", but at the time I was thinking "AHA! Here's my problem, 5GB of my 20GB drive's free space has been corrupted!". After all, I had typed FORMAT C :>)

My best guess (in retrospect) is that since I had booted with a Win95 disk the OS did not recognize my 20gb "C" drive, either because it was too big or because it was an NTFS partition.

In either case, I'm just glad I didn't have to build a whole new computer! I really have other things to spend my money on. Damn mortgage!

Viken