added new hard drive = problems

[dr1241]

I have added a new Samsung 120G hard drive as a slave to my computer. I had no issues installing the hard drive. I formatted it under windows xp and assigned it a drive letter. I can save info on the drive, but the computer is completely unstable now. There are some programs that shut the computer down after trying to run them. I get a blue screen that says there is some sort of error and the computer restarts. also when it restarts, the mobo changes the cpu speeds. i'm running an athlon 1.33 at 266mhz fsb, and it changes automatically to 1000 at 133mhz fsb.

I have no idea what the problem could be. Any ideas? I also added a stick of 512mb ram the same day. the computer was running very smoothly before. Could it be that my power supply cannot handle all the load properly? It is a 300watt power supply unit. I've heard mixed answers on that.

Here are my system details: Athlon 1.33, shuttle nforce2 ultra-400 mobo, 2 sticks Geil 512mb ddr ram, 40g seagate ide/ata hd, 120g samsung slave drive ide/ata, lite-on dvd/cdr drive, 52x cdrom dr, 3.5 inch floppy, 64mb gf4 mx440 video card, 2 system fans, 300 watt power supply, windows xp home ed.

Thanks in advance to everyone!

 

[sjonnie]

The memory is more likely to cause instability that the hard drive. A running hard drive consumes very little power so I doubt that's the problem. Try removing the new RAM and see if the problem remains. If not then it's a memory problem.

 

[Crashman]

Yes, it could be a power problem. And your CPU is SUPPOSED to run at 133x10, aka 1333MHz and 133MHz FSB. 266MHz is a data rate, not a clock frequency.

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[dr1241]

thanks you guys. today i'm going to pull out the new stick of ram and see if that is the cause. perhaps to be safe i should order a new power supply anyway? Crashman, i made a mistake about the cpu thing. what i meant to say was that the cpu was running at 1333mhz and the fsb at 133mhz but when the computer gets the error message and shuts itself down, it restarts at 1000mhz and fsb at 100mhz. i then have to go into the bios to change back, sometimes it will save and run at full speed again, sometimes it won't and will be stuck at 1000mhz and 100mhz fsb. thanks again!

 

[sjonnie]

That's the CMOS resetting itself to default settings like when you have an overclocking error. Makes me think either your memory timings are too aggressive or your RAM stick is faulty.

 

[Crashman]

The computer detected a crash, thought it might be caused by a bad setting, and used the more conservative setting (1000/100) to aliviate the problem. The only way to prevent the system from resetting the speed after a crash is to eliminate crashes!

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[dr1241]

I pulled out the new stick of ram yesterday morning and reset everything to optimal in the bios. I ran all the programs that were causing the reboot and they all worked fine. I left the computer on all day and checked it before I went to bed; everything was still in working order. It seems quite logical that it was the new stick of ram after all. Thanks so much you guys! I may just return my ram and let it be for now.