[skatr581]

Last december I ordered parts for a brand new PC build (yay newegg). I did plenty of research on the hardware I was choosing to ensure 100% compatibility ect ect. Everything was perfect. I recieved my parts and built the PC. It worked 100% correctly on the first startup. Not a single problem. This computer has been perfect, 100% flawless, until just last week. One day I noticed it was running unusually slow. I figured well the pc has been on for awhile, and I run intensive gaming software ect ect, time for a restart. I restart the computer and It takes FOREVER to load. It sat at the windows animated loading screen for like 10 minutes before it loaded. I was shocked. I loaded up and did complete spyware and virus scans, cleaned out everything. Rebooted again and it was perfectly fine. Then after another few days of working as it should. It starts to boot up a bit slower again I notice. I figured oh well I'll reformat this weekend and clear everything up. Well last night my computer was running really slow again and I was really tired, so I just thought alright ill reformat tomorrow. I shut it down and went to sleep. I wake up the next morning and the PC wont boot. First, it sits at the windows loading screen for like 15 minutes and then gives me a BSOD. Then I restart again and it takes me to the safe mode boot option screen. I choose start windows normally, and the progress bar comes up at the bottom and freezes there. Then I restart again and I get an error "Cannot read from disk, press CTRL ALT DEL to restart" or something of that sort. And everytime I restart from then on its one of those random problems thats preventing me from booting up. I said screw it ill reformat. Loaded my cd up, even booting from the cd was slow. I selected to set up windows and accepted the agreement. Then as usual it says "Searching for previous versions of Microsoft Windows.." and it completely freezes there. This is as far as I have gotten ive let it sit for over 30 minutes like this it will not progress. I'm scared out of my mind right now. Please help.

Edited by skatr581, 01 August 2005 - 10:24 AM.

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it almost sounds like your mbr(master boot record) or your Hdd are scewed up pretty bad. do you have another Hdd, you can put in and load Windows on to see what happens?

when you are in safemode goto start>run>and type CMD

in the dos window type the following, (You will have to have your winxp cd available to do this)

sfc /scannow

NOTE: please notice the space between sfc and /

Also if you have a second Hard Drive available you could try installing that, load winxp on it and see what happens. if the same problem happens then you need to look at your bios settings. You may even have to flash your bios.

[Dragon]

it almost sounds like your mbr(master boot record) or your Hdd are scewed up pretty bad. do you have another Hdd, you can put in and load Windows on to see what happens?

when you are in safemode goto start>run>and type CMD

in the dos window type the following, (You will have to have your winxp cd available to do this)

sfc /scannow

NOTE: please notice the space between sfc and /

Also if you have a second Hard Drive available you could try installing that, load winxp on it and see what happens. if the same problem happens then you need to look at your bios settings. You may even have to flash your bios.

[skatr581]

ok new update....been pretty busy on the it. i tried reseting the bios defaults on the mb, no go. i do have a 2nd hd and i experimented with it quite a bit. i installed it as a slave to my normal hd and i got an instant disk read error...then i disconnected the original hd completely and set my 2ndary test hd as master. it passed the disk error and loaded normal with speed, i started to get excited. then bam, blue screen right before windows loading screen should have came on. its looking more and more like something is just completely wrong with my mb

[Dragon]

try the sfc /scannow that I mentioned earlier, see if that helps. if not then you might be correct in it being your MOBO. Lets us know what happens, you can do the sfc /scannow in safe mode.

[OneCool]

Sounds like the hardrive died to me

If its new (under a year) go to the manufacturer's website and get a RMA#

Have them replace it

[skatr581]

i cant even boot to safe mode...just before i get to the screen to boot safe mode is when i get the disk error....and if it was my hard drive that was bad...then why wouldnt my other hard drive work ..why would i get a bsod

[makai]

then why wouldnt my other hard drive work ..why would i get a bsod

Unless this drive was originally loaded for this machine, the configuration table is all wrong. XP will not boot up from a disk created under another machines configuration.

makai

[warriorscot]

It does sound very much like the hard drive has failed. reinstall windows on the other one you might be able to salvage the data from the other drive afterwards maybe.

[skatr581]

well... already tried booting off the cd and it froze...you saying i should put a different hard drive in there and boot off the cd again with that?

[skatr581]

bump

[makai]

i do have a 2nd hd and i experimented with it quite a bit. i installed it as a slave to my normal hd

It does sound very much like the hard drive has failed. reinstall windows on the other one you might be able to salvage the data from the other drive afterwards maybe.

I think Warriorscot was referring to your 2nd hd. If nothing is on this second hd, or you don't care about losing it's data, perhaps you should install XP on that drive. You will then be able to tell if your original hd is bad. If it is, then connect it up as a slave and at least try to retrieve your data.

makai

Edited by makai, 02 August 2005 - 09:38 AM.

[skatr581]

well actually...the hard drive on my computer im having the problem with...has no valuable information..i could care less to lose the data on that...but my 2nd hard drive on my 2nd computer is the one i was working with and that hard drive does have data i need...now...what im getting out of it is that maybe i should load up my 2nd hard drive...make a new partition on it and try to instal xp on it? that way i can find out if my 1st hard drive is bad, but also saving the data on my 2nd hard drive...would that work?

[makai]

now...what im getting out of it is that maybe i should load up my 2nd hard drive...make a new partition on it and try to instal xp on it? that way i can find out if my 1st hard drive is bad, but also saving the data on my 2nd hard drive...would that work?

Theoretically, installing another instance of XP on a separate partition would work, however, I can't really say it won't cause problems with the first instance as I've never tried it. Xp can be weird at times and enough posts on this forum will confirm this. Why don't we forget about the 2nd drive as we don't want to mess up something and take a chance of you losing your data.

Who makes the drive you're having problems with? Do you have the hard drive manufactures disk utilities for it? What you could do is run the manufactures diagnostics on it to see if any problems are flagged. Also, you could write zeros to it (low-level format) to completely wipe it out. If the diagnostics pass, and you wipe the drive, you could try installing XP again on it to see if things get better. This is what I would do at this point. If the drive fails diagnostics, contact the manufacture for RMA.

makai

[skatr581]

ok i my hard drive is a seagate barracuda...i downloaded the diag software and booted...i ran the test...my motherboard passed the test and my hard drive failed...im gona try to re run a full hd test and post some info

[skatr581]

i kept making attempts to run more tests on the hard drive...each time something different would happen, sometimes it would even refuse to test the drive...but everytime the diag program noted that the hard drive had failed the test.....as i noted earlier i tried to boot from the cd to reformat and reinstal windows on the hard drive...it would freeze at random places while trying to run the windows cd to reformat and reinstall...i would get to different places each time before it froze...one time i actually got to reformat the drive and it started to instal windows...and then my computer just shut down on its own...after that i tried to boot from the cd using my other hard drive which works 100%....the boot up was smoothe and there was no lag or freezing involved...seemed 100% normal...right now i am 95% convinced that it is my hard drive...what do you guys think?

and if it is my hard drive...i had ordered this one from newegg...i ordered it non-retail (witout box)...would i still be able to punch in the number at the manufacturer website and maybe get a new one sent out? or..