Pages: 1

 

2008-08-01 03:56:55
Hakei
Banned
+295|6263
Okay, about 10 months ago I custom built a rig and had to troubles until about 6 months in, when I kept getting lots of errors when doing chkdsk /r. I was constantly reformating and it got annoying. In the end I decided to buy a new HDD (500 GB Western Digital) and gave that a go. It went fine for a month or so and then it started doing some weird things (Random BSODs, couldn't boot into safe mode etc) anyway, a month after when trying to boot into XP after another reformat, my screen displayed lots of different characters and numbers on the boot screen, when I checked the disk space it had indeed lost everything it had.

Today, I deleted the partition, changed the SATA cable (I used the same cable for both HDDs) and installed XP, all went fine and there didn't seem to be any problems. I ran chkdsk /r and I didn't receive one error. I left my computer to download windows updates and came back an hour later to see that my screen had frozen, the time was wrong and I couldn't click on the explorer bar nor could I run task manager. I could however alt tab for a brief length of time, however all applications didn't respond. Shortly after I rebooted and couldn't get into windows XP (No BSOD after the windows screen loads, just a reboot with no error)

Sometimes I can boot into Windows (Using the most recent settings that worked) but my time is limited to about 5 minutes before the computer stops responding. My question is: Is this a HDD failure, or could it lead to something else? If it is a HDD failure, what would be the most likely reason behind it, a faulty SATA cable? Or perhaps my PSU isn't good enough?

My rig is:

380W PSU
8600 GT GPU
AMD 64 6000+ CPU
Asus M2N-E SLI MB
4 Gig Kingston RAM
500 GB WD HDD

Thanks.
2008-08-01 04:01:37
Mavik
Member
+22|6045|Germany
We can rule out "old friends" - as in Viruses carried over from the old system installation (data partitions included)?
2008-08-01 04:02:23
Hakei
Banned
+295|6263

Mavik wrote:

We can rule out "old friends" - as in Viruses carried over from the old system installation (data partitions included)?
Not quite sure what you're asking :p Rephrase please?
2008-08-01 04:17:34
Cheez
Herman is a warmaphrodite
+1,027|6707|King Of The Islands

Your latest problem doesn't sound like HDD.

http://www.mersenne.org/freesoft.htm
My state was founded by Batman. Your opinion is invalid.
2008-08-01 04:20:05
Hakei
Banned
+295|6263

Cheez wrote:

Your latest problem doesn't sound like HDD.

http://www.mersenne.org/freesoft.htm
Did you forget to copy a link to something? You linked me to something to do with prime numbers. o_O
2008-08-01 04:24:37
Mavik
Member
+22|6045|Germany

Hakei wrote:

Mavik wrote:

We can rule out "old friends" - as in Viruses carried over from the old system installation (data partitions included)?
Not quite sure what you're asking :p Rephrase please?
Nutshell: Did you scan vor viruses? ^^

But Cheez is right I think, seems to be something different than last time.




Hakei wrote:

Cheez wrote:

Your latest problem doesn't sound like HDD.

http://www.mersenne.org/freesoft.htm
Did you forget to copy a link to something? You linked me to something to do with prime numbers. o_O
Be glad, that it is just prime numbers... I once linked a friend something completely different...

Last edited by Mavik (2008-08-01 04:25:55)

2008-08-01 04:26:29
Hakei
Banned
+295|6263

Mavik wrote:

Hakei wrote:

Mavik wrote:

We can rule out "old friends" - as in Viruses carried over from the old system installation (data partitions included)?
Not quite sure what you're asking :p Rephrase please?
Nutshell: Did you scan vor viruses? ^^

But Cheez is right I think, seems to be something different than last time.
No, but I am very careful with what I download - I had AVG and scanned when my HDD had problems way back when the first one started to play up, no problems what so ever. Today's failure was after I installed a few basic drivers needed to get online to download windows update.
2008-08-01 04:28:56
Cheez
Herman is a warmaphrodite
+1,027|6707|King Of The Islands

Lol, download it, then do Torture Test. Its awsm at detecting shite RAM.
My state was founded by Batman. Your opinion is invalid.
2008-08-01 04:43:37
Scorpion0x17
can detect anyone's visible post count...
+691|7034|Cambridge (UK)
@Hakei:

If you can, get yourself a voltmeter, or multimeter, take the side of the case of your PC and find an unused molex, now measure the voltages between the two pairs of lines (the first two sockets in the molex connector are either ground and +12V or ground and +5V, and the other two are the other (the two grounds are the two outermost sockets, iirc)) - if the voltages are within +/-5% then it may be but probably isn't you power supply - if they're within +/-3% then it definitely not the power supply - over +/-5% and it's new power supply time.

If you can't get hold of a voltmeter, or multimeter, then you will need to use a software voltage meter - did your motherboard come with a disk of utilities, and is there a voltage monitoring tool amongst them? If so, use that, but be aware that software voltage meters, even official ones designed for a specific model of motherboard, can give offset readings (i.e. they will always be, for example, 0.1V lower than the true voltage).

Also, try to get an assessment of how 'smooth' the voltages are - they will fluctuate a little even in the best of power supplies, but if they're changing rapidly and/or over quite a large range, particularly if they drop out of spec at all, then, again, it's time for a new power supply.
2008-08-01 21:37:16
Hakei
Banned
+295|6263

Scorpion0x17 wrote:

@Hakei:

If you can, get yourself a voltmeter, or multimeter, take the side of the case of your PC and find an unused molex, now measure the voltages between the two pairs of lines (the first two sockets in the molex connector are either ground and +12V or ground and +5V, and the other two are the other (the two grounds are the two outermost sockets, iirc)) - if the voltages are within +/-5% then it may be but probably isn't you power supply - if they're within +/-3% then it definitely not the power supply - over +/-5% and it's new power supply time.

If you can't get hold of a voltmeter, or multimeter, then you will need to use a software voltage meter - did your motherboard come with a disk of utilities, and is there a voltage monitoring tool amongst them? If so, use that, but be aware that software voltage meters, even official ones designed for a specific model of motherboard, can give offset readings (i.e. they will always be, for example, 0.1V lower than the true voltage).

Also, try to get an assessment of how 'smooth' the voltages are - they will fluctuate a little even in the best of power supplies, but if they're changing rapidly and/or over quite a large range, particularly if they drop out of spec at all, then, again, it's time for a new power supply.
Can I not use BIOS to check my volts?
2008-08-01 21:50:40
jaymz9350
Member
+54|6845

Hakei wrote:

Scorpion0x17 wrote:

@Hakei:

If you can, get yourself a voltmeter, or multimeter, take the side of the case of your PC and find an unused molex, now measure the voltages between the two pairs of lines (the first two sockets in the molex connector are either ground and +12V or ground and +5V, and the other two are the other (the two grounds are the two outermost sockets, iirc)) - if the voltages are within +/-5% then it may be but probably isn't you power supply - if they're within +/-3% then it definitely not the power supply - over +/-5% and it's new power supply time.

If you can't get hold of a voltmeter, or multimeter, then you will need to use a software voltage meter - did your motherboard come with a disk of utilities, and is there a voltage monitoring tool amongst them? If so, use that, but be aware that software voltage meters, even official ones designed for a specific model of motherboard, can give offset readings (i.e. they will always be, for example, 0.1V lower than the true voltage).

Also, try to get an assessment of how 'smooth' the voltages are - they will fluctuate a little even in the best of power supplies, but if they're changing rapidly and/or over quite a large range, particularly if they drop out of spec at all, then, again, it's time for a new power supply.
Can I not use BIOS to check my volts?
The BIOS or any other software will not be as accurate as a volt meter.  But the major thing is you need to put a load on the psu by cpu/gpu intensive tasks so you can see if it is failing.  A psu may read fine at idle in the bios but under load can't keep stable voltages.
2008-08-02 15:17:43
Scorpion0x17
can detect anyone's visible post count...
+691|7034|Cambridge (UK)

jaymz9350 wrote:

Hakei wrote:

Scorpion0x17 wrote:

@Hakei:

If you can, get yourself a voltmeter, or multimeter, take the side of the case of your PC and find an unused molex, now measure the voltages between the two pairs of lines (the first two sockets in the molex connector are either ground and +12V or ground and +5V, and the other two are the other (the two grounds are the two outermost sockets, iirc)) - if the voltages are within +/-5% then it may be but probably isn't you power supply - if they're within +/-3% then it definitely not the power supply - over +/-5% and it's new power supply time.

If you can't get hold of a voltmeter, or multimeter, then you will need to use a software voltage meter - did your motherboard come with a disk of utilities, and is there a voltage monitoring tool amongst them? If so, use that, but be aware that software voltage meters, even official ones designed for a specific model of motherboard, can give offset readings (i.e. they will always be, for example, 0.1V lower than the true voltage).

Also, try to get an assessment of how 'smooth' the voltages are - they will fluctuate a little even in the best of power supplies, but if they're changing rapidly and/or over quite a large range, particularly if they drop out of spec at all, then, again, it's time for a new power supply.
Can I not use BIOS to check my volts?
The BIOS or any other software will not be as accurate as a volt meter.  But the major thing is you need to put a load on the psu by cpu/gpu intensive tasks so you can see if it is failing.  A psu may read fine at idle in the bios but under load can't keep stable voltages.
What jaymz said.



Also, if you want to know what to use to put load on the CPU, I recommend the 'burn-in' test included in SiSoftware Sandra

Last edited by Scorpion0x17 (2008-08-02 15:28:56)

 

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