Continuous Problems with My Harddrive!

[Xer0ne]

Help! Computer Restarting On It's Own!

Back in Nov I purchased a new graphics card and 2 sticks of memory. I've been playing inside computers for a long time, and so I knew my way around the tower pretty well. I installed the new upgrades myself, and removed the old ones.

I went from a nForce 5500 PCI to a nForce 6600 GT AGP in graphics cards, and then from 512 PC2700 to 2 sticks of 512 PC3200.

Everything worked great for about a month, until I started getting random blue screen errors. Most of the time it told me that it was a "Device Driver Error" but all my drivers were up-to-date.

Long story short, after about 3 months, it finally went dead and the operating system was corrupted. Being wise, I had backed up everything once it started doing the blue screen errors, and so I simply reformatted the hard drive.

It's been two weeks since the reformat, and there hasn't been a single problem, until last night. The PC froze, and so I simply restarted it. Once I did that, it would try to load XP and restart automatically.

I tried running checkdisk from my Windows CD, but it would freeze on me.

So finally, I thought it might be the memory which was messing up the Hard Drive, and so I put the old PC2700 back in by itself. This allowed me to finally get to the XP Log In screen. However, once I logged in, I would get to my desktop and the PC would restart automatically.

Once more, I whipped out the Windows XP disk and ran CHKDSK. It took two hours and found "two or more errors on the volume." This promted me to run CHKDSK /r for repairs. After another 2 hours of scanning, it finished, and I assumed that fixed whatever errors I was having...wrong!

So now I'm not sure if it's the memory, the hard drive, or both...or maybe even something else. Has anyone experienced this before? Should I get a new Hard drive and try using that? Would changing the memory from PC2700 to PC3200 have anything to do with it? Could it be a power supply problem due to the introduction of the 6600 GT? I only have a 300 W power supply...

Someone please help me, so I know what I need to buy!

 

[howard_hopkinso]

Hello and welcome to Techspot.

Should I get a new Hard drive and try using that? Would changing the memory from PC2700 to PC3200 have anything to do with it? Could it be a power supply problem due to the introduction of the 6600 GT? I only have a 300 W power supply...

It could be any of those things.

Look at this PSU wattage calculator. Add a further 30% to whatever figure it gives you, as a safety margin.

Also, go HERE and follow the instructions.

If that doesn`t help. Zip 5 or 6 of your latest minidumps together and attach them here.

Regards Howard :wave: :wave:

 

[Xer0ne]

Hello and welcome to Techspot.



It could be any of those things.

Look at this PSU wattage calculator. Add a further 30% to whatever figure it gives you, as a safety margin.

Also, go HERE and follow the instructions.

If that doesn`t help. Zip 5 or 6 of your latest minidumps together and attach them here.

Regards Howard :wave: :wave:

Thanks Howard for the help, I plan to test the memory on my own and see if that has anything to do with it.

I used the PSU Calculator and it showed 281 Watts, and with the added 30% you suggested, it would put it at around 365 Watts, which is easily over my petty little 300 W power supply. So I may give in and grab a 500-600 W just to make sure I'm good for the next few years if I need to add more.

As for the dumps, I can't put those here because no dump was made. I've formatted my harddrive since the blue screens occured. Last night, it froze, and after I restarted, it now just auto resets. No dumping has occured since the format. Also, even if there was a dump, I can't access it because when I log in, it autoresets, which prevents me from getting the files. :dead:

Any other suggestions? Anyone else experienced something similar to this?

 

[Xer0ne]

Update!

Ok, so last night I spent an hour reverting my computer back to it's original form. I pulled the graphics card out, put in the old memory, and put everything back to default.

I then went out and bought a brand new hard drive, and spent 2 hours formatting it and setting Windows XP on it.

After all this time was wasted, my computer is STILL auto-resetting.

So I'm going to rule out any upgrades that I installed as being the problem, since they were removed. And it seems like my hard drive is not as bad off as I originally thought.

So now I'm looking at either the whole motherboard being fried, or the processor going out.

I'm not that detailed a computer tech to get into those areas, so if anyone can help with this situation, it would be greatly appreciated. Thanks!