New hard drive = instability?

I

InorganicMatter

[H]F Junkie
Joined
Oct 19, 2004
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Right, this morning I installed a second gig of DDR (w00t!) and a 250 gig hard drive. Suddenly, I've got BSODs, hanging when booting into Windows, and my computer would turn back on if I shut it off (fixed this by disable power on power loss). I know for sure the DDR isn't the culprit, since I transfered it from another system that ran rock solid for years. That leaves the hard drive. Now, I've been in computer for 10+ years, and I have NEVER seen a system go haywire from a new hard drive. Could I have botched something else when I was putting my new toys in, or could my instability really be caused by this new hard drive?

The new hard drive is my storage drive. I boot of my Raptors and store stuff on my other drive.
 
Is the new DDR rated for the same speed/latencies as the original DDR in the machine? This happened to me when I dropped in a 512 stick rated at DDR 333 with the original 1gig stick of DDR400. Naturally the 512 stick didn't want to jump up to DDR400. Also make sure they take the same voltage, or at least close. If one is running to high/low it could cause instability like that.

It's easy to test if the new hard drive is causing a problem. Yank it and see if the instability continues. If it does, the RAM is the culprit. If it's stable without the new HD, I dunno what to tell ya. Good luck.
 
Just because something is stable at one point doesn't mean it's going to stay that way. It's very easy to zap components when transferring them to other machines, especially if you have to walk between them. I suggest running memtest to see if you get any errors.
 
maybe installing the new components draws too much power for you're psu to handle
 
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