system hangs - this is what i see in the event vie

[krelian]

my system keeps hanging without any specific reason, it
just freezes. The only pattern i see is by looking and
the event viewer - i keep getting the same errors just
before the freeze:
- The driver detected a controller error on
\Device\Harddisk0\D. (repeats for about 4 times)
- A parity error was detected on \Device\Ide\IdePort0
and than the first message repeats again 2 times.

Any help ?

 

[mister_e]

Do you have a spare hard-drive and/or a spare power-supply? It could be a bad hard-drive, but I've also seen a bad/weak power-supply cause the same symptoms. Try replacing the power-supply first (if you have a spare), and if you keep getting the errors try replacing the hard-drive.

Of course, as with anything related to computers, it could be one of many other possibilities that I just can't think of right now...maybe someone else will have some ideas/suggestions.

 

[krelian]

Thank you for trying to help, but i don't believe this is the problem beacuse of two things (one of them i recently discoverd)
- The disk is new, it has been running on my system for only 4 days.
- I noticed , that when i leave the system on all night (p2p and such), when i wake up in the morning it does'nt hang.

It seems like it only hangs when browse web pages or read some stuff from my computer. I thought that perhaps the problems is in the power saving options - when the disk will shut down after a while to save power - but that option is set on 'never'.
Any other ideas ?
thanks ahead

 

[mister_e]

The disk is new, it has been running on my system for only 4 days.

Just because it is new does not mean it can't be defective. As a matter of fact, it makes it all the more likely that this is your problem. If hardware is going to fail, chances are it will do so shortly/immediately after initial installation.

I'm not saying that your disk <b>IS</b> defective, I'm just saying that you shouldn't assume that because it is new that it can't have problems.

 

[Teq]

There are several possible causes for this... the others have already suggested a defective hard disk and underrated power supply, so I won't duplicate their excellent advice...

1) Wrong Cables.
Do you have ata100 cables on your machine? These are 80, not 40 conductor cables and with newer hard disks they are a must.

2) Bad Cables.
If you just put the HD in your machine it could be a defective/damaged cable. The new 80 conductor cables are very easy to break and I never plug/unplug one of them more than 3 times without replacing it.

3) Bad Power Supply connector.
Try plugging a different molex connector into your hard disk and see what happens.

4) Jumper Settings.
This may not be the universal experience but I've found that setting disks to the older Master/Slave settings is somewhat more reliable than the Cable Select which seems to be the default setting on newer drives.

5) Chipset.
There are known issues with some VIA chipsets that can cause data corruption. Notably the VIA 686 southbridge used by many motherboard makers can be a problemchild. There are fixes for this available from the VIA website in their newest 4 in 1 drivers.

6) IDE Settings.
I've seen data corruption errors result from having the DMA turned off in the BIOS but enabled in Windows. Take the disk off AUTO in your bios and use the "detect" function to establish it's exact parameters and be sure you have the DMA mode turned on. Also check in Windows an be sure it's turned on there as well.


Hope this helps...




--->It ain't better if it don't work<---

 

[krelian]

First, thanks for helping me out.
The cables are 40 conductor ones not 80. I would try to replace them but is it even possible for a HD to work with the wrong cables ?

I am using the same cables as with my old 20Gb disk which did'nt have any problems so i guess the cables integrity is ok.

Like i said the failure seems to occur only when the drive is idle, so i don't think this has to do with a bad power supply connector.

i did configure the jumper setting manualy i also run maxtor's own utility to check the installtion and it says the everything is fine.

I also installed new 4 in 1 drivers but that does'nt seem to help.

About the DMA - i did'nt see any settin realted to DMA i any part of the bios, in winodows however it is
enabled.

The most troubling thing is that the system only seem sto freeze when the HD is'nt doing any work
could be in some way related to a cooling problem ? I am now putting a big fan outside the computer
checking that option...