- Jan 31, 2010
- 1
- 0
- 18,510
Hi everyone! Please bear with me ... I tend to get too detailed ...
I've been having a very frustrating two weeks with one of my systems, and haven't had much help from the computer shop I used. The system is just six months old. If anyone can help here, it'd really make my life a lot less stressful.
Here are the system's specs:
Processor: AMD A64 7750
MoBo: Gigabyte GA-MA78GM-US2H
Power: ACEPOWER 450W
Memory: Kingston DDR2-5300 2GB
Hard Drives: 250GB Maxtor SATA (original/fried) / 500GB Seagate (new)
OS: Windows OS with Service Packs 1 to 3
This is my background info. I'm only including it as it may offer some of the Gurus here a better glimpse into the heart of the machine:
The first week I had it (back in July), I started noticing odd lines on the monitor. It has an onboard Radeon 3200 card on it, and I read that sometimes it acts up at full acceleration for 2D graphics. I decreased hardware acceleration. Nothing. I then disabled the Cool & Quiet feature on the motherboard. This fixed it.
Two weeks ago, the system was sluggish. I thought it may be the antivirus, so I uninstalled AVG (free) and installed TrendMicro Trial version, with the intent of buying it once I saw how the system liked it.
By the end of the week, the Maxtor hard drive was making awful start/stop grinding noises, and eventually, stopped working right. It would stick in a reboot loop. So I bought a new one: a Seagate 500GB. I managed to squeeze most of my files off the old one, but disk read errors kept interrupting copying, and I gave up. The drive still makes awful "pop n' grind" noises -- it starts and stops quite obviously. AND it gets scalding hot too.
New Seagate worked fine all last week. Fast and wonderful. I thought it was just a bad Maxtor drive.
Yesterday, the new hard drive couldn't be read during a boot. Disconnecting the dying one gave me a boot error, demanding a system disk (and I have no floppies to make one). BIOS and CMOS both work and see the hard drives; but I can't get into Windows XP. I can boot from CDs and DVDs, but I have no repair tools available. NTFS file system; no repair on my Windows CD.
I've moved the new hard drive to my other machine (running an ASUS M2N-SLIDeluxe MoBo), and it runs just beautifully. Scanned it with Avast!: no viruses.
My conclusion is that maybe my motherboard might having trouble with hard drives ... maybe even frying them by supplying too much power. I don't want to put the new hard drive back, because I'm worried that it may die too.
I took it to the computer shop, but all they recommended was a new hard drive. I don't want to pay $50 for another response like that (plus cost for more hardware).
If you've read this far, and have a clue, I'd very much appreciate the help in salvaging my 2nd system.
Thanks kindly for your time,
Rook.
PS - I'm comfortable enough to follow advice, and I know my way around a computer, but I'm still fairly new at this. I may need to ask for clarification here and there.
I've been having a very frustrating two weeks with one of my systems, and haven't had much help from the computer shop I used. The system is just six months old. If anyone can help here, it'd really make my life a lot less stressful.
Here are the system's specs:
Processor: AMD A64 7750
MoBo: Gigabyte GA-MA78GM-US2H
Power: ACEPOWER 450W
Memory: Kingston DDR2-5300 2GB
Hard Drives: 250GB Maxtor SATA (original/fried) / 500GB Seagate (new)
OS: Windows OS with Service Packs 1 to 3
This is my background info. I'm only including it as it may offer some of the Gurus here a better glimpse into the heart of the machine:
The first week I had it (back in July), I started noticing odd lines on the monitor. It has an onboard Radeon 3200 card on it, and I read that sometimes it acts up at full acceleration for 2D graphics. I decreased hardware acceleration. Nothing. I then disabled the Cool & Quiet feature on the motherboard. This fixed it.
Two weeks ago, the system was sluggish. I thought it may be the antivirus, so I uninstalled AVG (free) and installed TrendMicro Trial version, with the intent of buying it once I saw how the system liked it.
By the end of the week, the Maxtor hard drive was making awful start/stop grinding noises, and eventually, stopped working right. It would stick in a reboot loop. So I bought a new one: a Seagate 500GB. I managed to squeeze most of my files off the old one, but disk read errors kept interrupting copying, and I gave up. The drive still makes awful "pop n' grind" noises -- it starts and stops quite obviously. AND it gets scalding hot too.
New Seagate worked fine all last week. Fast and wonderful. I thought it was just a bad Maxtor drive.
Yesterday, the new hard drive couldn't be read during a boot. Disconnecting the dying one gave me a boot error, demanding a system disk (and I have no floppies to make one). BIOS and CMOS both work and see the hard drives; but I can't get into Windows XP. I can boot from CDs and DVDs, but I have no repair tools available. NTFS file system; no repair on my Windows CD.
I've moved the new hard drive to my other machine (running an ASUS M2N-SLIDeluxe MoBo), and it runs just beautifully. Scanned it with Avast!: no viruses.
My conclusion is that maybe my motherboard might having trouble with hard drives ... maybe even frying them by supplying too much power. I don't want to put the new hard drive back, because I'm worried that it may die too.
I took it to the computer shop, but all they recommended was a new hard drive. I don't want to pay $50 for another response like that (plus cost for more hardware).
If you've read this far, and have a clue, I'd very much appreciate the help in salvaging my 2nd system.
Thanks kindly for your time,
Rook.
PS - I'm comfortable enough to follow advice, and I know my way around a computer, but I'm still fairly new at this. I may need to ask for clarification here and there.
Facebook
Twitter
Instagram