Windows instability.. possibly my SATA??

[Vimes]

ok so some time ago i was having some stability problems with windows XP (after like year or so of no such problems with same setup) where it was starting to lag badly and freeze up on occasion, after inspection i figured it was the 120gig maxtor SATA hdd i had (it gave me troubles even after a damn good zero-ing) so i went ahead and bought myself a new 200gig diamondmax plus 10 SATA drive which is sitting along side my other 200 gig diamondmax 10 SATA drive(which i've had no problem with) i also bough tnew ram, 1gig of dual channel and got rid of the old stuff to make sure..

but today after re-installing windows on the new HDD (it took 10 or so hours to fuly zero it with the dos utility for maxtor) i'm not really updated on windows or anything yet but playing some music (and at win boot up) the audio is quite jumpy at times as if i was moving huge files.. this is a sympton it was suffering before.. also a game i played for couple mins was bit laggy, more so than usual..

during the time between removing old HDD and getting the ew one i had a 10gig IDE HDD in the with winxp on and despite the small hd space i didn't see any such problems.. could the hdd size be a problem? or the fact that it's SATA perhaps?? i have raid turned off in the bias so that shouldn't be interfering. my MOBO is Asus GA-8KNXP

any ideas on what the problem could be? bit upsetting when i have 400gig of space and 1gig of ram an i'm still getting this problem.. thanx

 

[Didou]

Asus ? The GA-8KNXP is a i875 board made by Gigabyte last I checked.

Does this occur during certain activity (Lan transfers, CD/DVD burning, etc.) or at any time ?

Have you installed the Intel chipset drivers ?

 

[Vimes]

yeh gigabye sorry i don't know why i said asus. um well the audio thing just happens for no reason (like i said it happens during the startup with the windows theme) but since i posted this i was transfering about 4gig of data from my second 200gig sata hdd that's not given me any problems to my new hdd and it took like 30-45 mins, used up a fair bit of my gig of ram and my comp locked up couple times.. then towards the end the hdd started clicking loud single clicks now and then.. which worries me cos that's what happened with the old one before it died.. then at the end of the transfer before it was finished i got blue screen of death, my fav!! then tried to reboot but nothing.. got far as tryin to boot from CD then the HDD then black screen, no windows loading logo thing..

oh yeh, all drivers install as have always done

this is actually the second time the blue screen of death has appeared on my new hdd.. the otherday when i first got it i installed everything and i left steam running all night to dl half-life 2 and dod(these are the files i was just trying to transfer actually, no relevance i expect) and when i woke in the morning i was presented with blue screen of death and when i tried to reboot then it got to the windows loading screen, ionce that finished the blue screen flashed on then stystem rebooted straight away.