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Bad Hard Drive? or another problem?

J

justapix

Weaksauce
Joined
Jan 14, 2005
Messages
92
I am building a computer, and I can not get windows to load on the new system, and I believe it to be the hard drive as it is the only thing that I am recycling from another computer. This disk was used as a storage drive on the other computer so it never ran much except to access mpeg and mp3 files...

Here are the system specs:
AMD Athlon XP 2800+ Barton 333MHz FSB
ABIT NF7-S2 Socket A
Rosewill 512MB 184-Pin DDR SDRAM DDR 400
Western Digital 120GB 7200 RPM (same drive as reference in a different post)
LITE-ON DVD Burner DVD+R 16X, CD-R 48X, DVD+R DL 4X
ASUS A9550GE/TD/128 Radeon 9550 128MB DDR

every time I go through windows install, I get the BSOD or I will get an message saying cannot save file xxxx.xxx please make sure windows XP disk is in drive and press enter (sometimes after hitting enter install will continue other times I can hit enter forever and nothing will happen).

I have tried running both my Windows 2000 and XP CD's get the same type of errors (they are never exactly the same error).

I ran Western Digitals drive test on the HD and got a couple of error, don't remember them anymore, decide to write zeros to the whole disk to see if that would fix the problem, re-ran drive test and did not receive any errors, tried installing again same problem :mad:

have tried the rewriting the drive a couple of times w/ zeros and installing not luck, Yet everytime i run WD drive test i recieve not errors on the disk. I guess its possible its the DVD-ROM but the errors seem to consistently point at the hard drive and not the DVD-ROM drive, and never have I had any problems loading up the windows installer, just saving files to the hard drive...but It still could be something else that i haven't thought of...


If anyone has any idea of what it could be or how I could fix this. I would be greatly appreciative

justapix
 
I work for a computer shop in the USAF and i ahve ran accross this same problem before. But the thing is i think you answered it yourself without the willingness to fix it. :) I had the same problem, error kept popping up during reinstallation or cleaninstallation of windows xp and 2000, at first, and it took like five times for me to get frustrated, i thought it was the cd's, so i used like five diffrent ones that i coulda have sworn worked, and the errors poped up with diffrent file errors, but i noticed they wree all around the same spot on the installation, diffrent file maybe, but within a 10-15 files from eachother. Now i had just formated this system and kenw the cd/dvd burner worked like ten minutes b4 install cuase i backed up all info onto dvd. But sure enough i switched out the burner and it installed perfectly. I dont know what was wrong. But then i put the dvd burner into a new system and again it worked fine. :) havent tried installing windows again with it thought. :)

Hope this helped a little bit.
Good Luck

NBG
 
yeah it wasn't the dvd, checked it with my other cd-rom same problem....

DAMN IT!!!!

so unless you guys can think of something else?

i'm gonna need to get another hard drive :mad:
 
hmmm well...... loaded up fine in another computer...

memory....?

running mem-test now....
 
just checked abit... the ABIT NF7-S2 Socket A does not list the AMD Athlon XP 2800+ Barton 333MHz FSB under its Compatibility Report

could that be the problem...
 
As far as I know, if there's a problem with the processor, then the BIOS won't even boot or post. It will just give you an error message referring to the processor.

I had almost the exact same problems about a month ago when I was putting my machine together. windows would install, but an error message would always pop up at some point in the procedure saying that certain files couldn't be copied, and certain key functions in XP wouldn't work, and my machine would randomly reboot all the time. It got so bad that Windows wouldn't install at all. It would just say the files couldn't be copied. Then, the system wouldn't even boot unless I disconnected both my dvd-burner and dvd-rom drives. I put the hard drive in another computer and tried to install windows, and it went through smoothly with no problems.

I got a new motherboard, and windows installed with no shennanigans, and the reboot problems stopped completely.

That being said, I'd replace the motherboard, because it sounds like the IDE channels are doinked.
 
RAM appears to be good, have been running mem-test since last night with no errors...

I'm really at a loss right now...

any help please

justapix
 
BIOS Update?
PSU?
Hardware Compatibility List/Windows Catalog?

Also have you tried to install with an absolute minimum of hardware (Only CPU, 1 stick of RAM, Video, CD drive, HDD) connected?

Also, have you tried clearing CMOS/resetting fail-safe defaults?
 
well scicne you have a spare computer you can do lots of easy test to see what it is. If it isnt the memory, <through memtest> and it isnt the hardrive. Do yourself a favor and switch out the cdrom/dvdrom with the one from youro ther computer and see if that works the install through all the way. Im pretty sure thats what the problem is. Check it out and let me know.
 
Alright let’s start to break this down

*********New Computer I'm Building*********
AMD Athlon XP 2800+ Barton 333MHz FSB
ABIT NF7-S2 Socket A
1x Rosewill 512MB 184-Pin DDR SDRAM DDR 400
Western Digital 120GB 7200 RPM (drive was in Currently Running Computer)
LITE-ON DVD Burner DVD+R 16X, CD-R 48X, DVD+R DL 4X
ASUS A9550GE/TD/128 Radeon 9550 128MB DDR
PSU: 350 W AGI (1-2years old)
*************************************************

This is what I have tried:
I tried to install 1st time and an message saying cannot save file xxxx.xxx please make sure windows XP disk is in drive and press enter, ran an error test on the drive came back with error, then wrote Zero's to the whole drive, re-ran install, same problem and repeated this steps 3-4 time with no real change except receiving different errors like the BSOD. Once or twice got through install, but after windows loaded it would report 2-3 errors...

Re-ran WD Hard Drive Test can back with no errors... have retried 3-4 times and have Not received a single error....

Installed the latest BIOS from ABIT...no different results

So next I swapped out the DVD-ROM and placed in my Plextor CD-RW 12x8x32x, ran into the same problems,

I next took the WD 120 GB HD, and hooked it up to my Currently Running Computer and installed Windows XP on it with no problems

The PSU in this system is 350 W AGI; it powered my Currently Running Computer for about 5 months. I took my brand new Enermax 530W and hooked up my CD-ROM and Hard drive to it, and everything else ran off the AGI, did this to test to make sure there wasn't a load problem on the PSU, ran install and received the same type or errors...

Next I ran mem-test all last night on the new computer build with no errors reported...


*********Currently Running Computer*********
ABIT AS8
P4 3.4 GHz
2x Centon 512MB 3200 CAS 3 memory
Hitachi Deskstar T7K250 250GB Serial ATA II 7200RPM
Maxtor 40GB HDD 5400RPM
12GB IBM (had since ‘99 my 1st system build)
Plextor CD-RW 12x8x32x
RADEON 9700 PRO
Hercules Gamesurround Fortissimo III 7.1
ENERMAX SLI 535W
**************************************************

Have cleared the CMOS, do not remember if I have tried installing at default settings or not...

I have a spare Geforce 2 card at home I could try installing...

I also am picking up a spare 30GB hard drive from a friend tonight and testing that out in the system...

Any other ideas, thoughts, suggestions or question please ask, I need and want as much information as I can to find the problem...

Thanks a lot to everyone for there help so far
justapix
 
:) wow, if that was your first post i woulda gave you mad props on explaining your problem. I think its the hardrive now. Didnt know that you actually got to finish the install once or twice before you crashed in the os. I defenitly think its the hardrive, but what with the hardrive is the question. Hmmm...... Not power cuase you tested that, dont think its actual platter damage but maybe physical damage of the platters, and when you wrote zeros to them it just skips so not seeing the damage and its still cuaseing errors, but that doesnt sound right. Hmmmm... do you know whwere the zeros were written onto the hd. Cuase windows partitions all but 8mb of hte hd using the 8mb to cache files for the system setup files for installing xp. maybe thats where you go the bad hd problem. and frankly i dont knwo if that fixable :).... Only way to find out if its the hd forr sure is to put a new one in there. Good luck my freind. and let us know if you find out exactly what it was.
 
You said you tried to install the first time; i didnt see it mention but did that hard drive orgiinally had windows on it? did you do a clean partition and format install? Windows tend to keep hardware profiles, so if you just installed it over a previous installation, Windows owuld think that you changed your computer and thus would not boot.

Other than that, it very well could be a hardware problem.

Try rebooting many times, kicking the case each time it gives a BSOD, my old computer did that, and after a few kicks, bangups, reorganize bios stuff such as boot order, slapping the HDD when it was booting, it finally worked.

Wait, before you do that, make sure that you either don't care about the HDD. Mine didn't crap out, but its a pretty durable SCSI.

To me, it sounds more like a disk write problem, and I don't know for sure if WD software tests for that, I don't think they do.. but that doesn't neccessary mean that your hard drive is dying; it may very well be the motherboard's IDE channel or settings, or even a fault cable - use ATA100/133 if you can.
 
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