Best guess ?

[Tony]

Archived from groups: alt.comp.hardware.homebuilt (More info?)

I have recently experienced a hard drive problem. It started with icons
images being mixed up on screen then system (w2k) would not reboot.
The hard drive works but the diagnosis says it has about 100 different
partitions on it from NTFS to FAT16.
I have also discovered my DVD writer only occasionally writes to DVD (w.o.),
most times to CD and never to +RW DVD.
The system now has a new hard drive and seems faultless and stable apart
from the writer.
My question is do you thing I have/had an IDE hardware fault, a power supply
hardware fault, or a spike on the mains power ?

Thanks
Tony

BTW is this the best n.g. for this question ?

 

[Guest]

Archived from groups: alt.comp.hardware.homebuilt (More info?)

The switching of icons and all that sounds like a virus. As for the
writer, I am unsure, but have a CD burner with similar problems....my
personal gues would be a hardware conflict...but like I said, that’s
just a guess....

"Tony" wrote:
>I have recently experienced a hard drive problem. It started with
>icons
>images being mixed up on screen then system (w2k) would not reboot.
>The hard drive works but the diagnosis says it has about 100
different
>partitions on it from NTFS to FAT16.
>I have also discovered my DVD writer only occasionally writes to DVD
>(w.o.),
>most times to CD and never to +RW DVD.
>The system now has a new hard drive and seems faultless and stable
>apart
>from the writer.
>My question is do you thing I have/had an IDE hardware fault, a power
>supply
>hardware fault, or a spike on the mains power ?
>
>Thanks
>Tony
>
>BTW is this the best n.g. for this question ?


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[Guest]

Archived from groups: alt.comp.hardware.homebuilt (More info?)

On Wed, 11 May 2005 08:31:08 -0000, "Tony"
<Tony@ilovespam.com> wrote:

>I have recently experienced a hard drive problem. It started with icons
>images being mixed up on screen then system (w2k) would not reboot.

What exactly (where and when too) did these icons images
appear? Offhand it sounds more like a video card fault or
memory errors... if they were the result of the failed HDD,
then perhaps it was shorting and power to other devices was
bad?

Did you have to reinstall windows to the new drive (presume
so since the partition info was scrambled as you wrote
below)?


>The hard drive works but the diagnosis says it has about 100 different
>partitions on it from NTFS to FAT16.

Do you still have the drive? I would wonder if it's still
viable, would set it up for further testing.

>I have also discovered my DVD writer only occasionally writes to DVD (w.o.),
>most times to CD and never to +RW DVD.

When it doesn't write, what are the exact symptoms?

>The system now has a new hard drive and seems faultless and stable apart
>from the writer.

is it possible it's jumpered wrong?
Possible the drive is failing?

>My question is do you thing I have/had an IDE hardware fault, a power supply
>hardware fault, or a spike on the mains power ?
>

What power supply?
I doubt an IDE hardware fault but if you suspect it you
might re-examine the cables, check bios settings and check
for motherboard bios updates.

 

[Tony]

Archived from groups: alt.comp.hardware.homebuilt (More info?)

"kony" <spam@spam.com> wrote in message
news:ign481ha22921tfciefesh3cv7p5fvmqaq@4ax.com...
> On Wed, 11 May 2005 08:31:08 -0000, "Tony"
> <Tony@ilovespam.com> wrote:
>

> What exactly (where and when too) did these icons images
> appear? Offhand it sounds more like a video card fault or
> memory errors... if they were the result of the failed HDD,
> then perhaps it was shorting and power to other devices was
> bad?

They were garbled versions of the existing desktop icons. Windows requested
I do a chkdsk but it was quite apparent the thing was badly failing, so I
rebooted...nothing.

>
> Did you have to reinstall windows to the new drive (presume
> so since the partition info was scrambled as you wrote
> below)?

Yes and the drive has no faulty areas and I spent two hours filling it full
of data - seems perfect.


> is it possible it's jumpered wrong?

No

Power supply is a 450 powering a p4 3g - plenty man enough.

I suppose the best thing to do is junk the whole thing, buy a new one, UPS,
double raid etc...but that's easy.

Thanks for your suggestions.

Tony

 

[Guest]

Archived from groups: alt.comp.hardware.homebuilt (More info?)

On Wed, 11 May 2005 21:39:19 -0000, "Tony"
<Tony@ilovespam.com> wrote:


>Power supply is a 450 powering a p4 3g - plenty man enough.
>

Possibly, if it's a good name-brand. If it's generic it's
very unlikely to be sufficient for the system.

>I suppose the best thing to do is junk the whole thing, buy a new one, UPS,
>double raid etc...but that's easy.

Junk it if that's warranted. Not easy though, typically the
most expensive and most time consuming considering the
orders, receiving, construciton and then OS reconfig.
Double raid would tend to be a bit faster though.