Boot issues, Hard drive error issues

[nbthor]

About a month ago my hard drive froze up and I replaced it with a Western Digital Caviar Black 500 gb Sata drive. I used an external USB hard drive enclosure to remove files etc, the old hard drive still worked, just wouldn't boot the OS. Well since then I had problems with boot up. At first it was just that restart wouldn't work out of Windows XP. The motherboard would beep, display it's identity and stop. Sometimes it would stop after detecting the CPU and the memory but not continue on to even look for the Hard drive or anyother bootable device. Now it takes two, three, sometimes four tries to get it to proceed to detect the hard drives and occasionally freezes on the Welcome screen to XP. When I check the event viewer it seems to get into loops of security checks, running the same one over and over. The last time I checked the System events, it showed none prior to the current boot up. I am also getting hard drive errors. No bad sectors, just corrupted files and messed up index entries.

System:

Amd Athlon 64, 200 MHz 3200+ about 3 years old
Winfast NF4SK8AA Motherboard
3 GB Ram, 2 x 512 Kingston, 2 x 1024 Lifetime
Asus branded - Nvidia GeForce 7300 GS
Windows XP Home, SP3

I am also having no problems once the computer actually boots, no BSOD's, nothing untoward. Also after it's going awhile, seems to start and stop no problem. It's feeling like an old car right now.

I am wondering whether to replace the current generic 450 W(DEER Computer Company ltd. )power supply with a corsair 450 W model. Looking at the Motherboard everything looks clean and appropriate (ie.. no oozing, crystallized gunk or anything like that).

I have not run memtest and will do that at some point too. Virus scans keep coming up clean.

Any thoughts would be helpful.

 

[Route44]

First, I would certainly change out your power supply because generic ones are often garbage. There are tremendous deals in the 450-550 range reputable psu's.

Second, check out this superb tutorial on USB by LookinAround: https://www.techspot.com/vb/topic122125.html

Third, run ChkDsk.

Fourth, I think it would be good for you to run a harddrive diagnostics. Your manufacturer will provide a free utility to do so.

* By the way, I have the same cpu on my second rig and it is a solid one. Steady as she goes...

 

[nbthor]

Just to clarify. The USB Hardrive enclosure is not giving me problems, although I had a removal issue until I discovered System Restore was monitoring that drive. Once I shut that off, voila, removed via safe removal as it was supposed to. The hard drive issues are with the brand new SATA WD. I run chkdsk and get a few orphaned files and incorrectly allocated free space messages. When I look at Data Lifeguard, smart parameters in Everest and the hard drive diagnostic in System Mechanic, everything comes up as good.

 

[Route44]

Under Data Lifeguard did you run the longer, more indepth test?

Also, what does Event Viewr show? Any Red Xs?

 

[nbthor]

The indepth test passes the drive. When I looked at event viewer again, there were red x's associated with nview info under the Application tab. I think most of them were associated with the installation of accessory packs with a scrapbooking application. Later an nview error appears again, this time referring to an Outlook timeout error. Under the system tab only red x's associated with a failed IE 8 install. Now I have to say, today I have been defragmenting the hard drive, trying to install IE8, ran a full virus scan and an in depth Data Lifeguard scan. I did not run this all at once, but the computer had to be turned on and off at least a dozen times and the event viewer only has data from today.