Computer boots up, blue screens, and won't find hd

So I've got this computer. It boots up just fine to XP. Beautiful bootup. Then, sometimes, it blue screens. After it blue screens, it won't detect the hard drive unless I power it down. So it doesn't detect the hard drive on a soft reboot, but it does on a hard reboot. Doesn't matter which port I plug the hard drive into.

Is it the hard drive or the motherboard that's having issues?

SATA drive, by the way.
Hard drive reports no problems on a test pc, but on the other pc, it has trouble finding it. I can swear it's a motherboard issue, but I don't know if I want to concede that just yet.

Same thing every time. At least it's consistent.

 

Check your Power Wiring you could have a loose connection here, if need be try another Power cable. If this is the fault it will be the 4 wired connector Red/Black/Yellow

 

Thanks for the response! I changed out the power supply, and there was no change. It does the same thing. I've also run a repair on Windows.

 

Well, a new motherboard didn't fix the issue. Looks like I need a better hard drive checking program. Any suggestions?

 

The best HD checker is the actual manufacturers one if you go to appropriate site and look for support it should lead you to it.

 

I had a similar problem and it was a cable fault have you tried changing the sata cable

 

So. I played with it a bit more. The blue screen that was coming up after the motherboard change involved the sound card. It's onboard, so I disabled it. The machine doesn't have any need for sound anyway. The computer hasn't crashed at all since I did it. It may have been a conflict somewhere, which is odd. The hard drive conflicting with the sound card?

 

Yes, I did. I've pretty much built a new machine around the hard drive. lol