Crash City

I would like to hear some suggestions from readers to what my problem may be.

About a month ago, my computer stopped working (one I had built myself). It would get to the Windows XP screen, and then I'd get the blue screen of death, something like UNMOUNTABLE BOOT DRIVE. So I hooked it up to a friends computer, and we discovered my hard drive was inaccessible. Failed hard drive, we thought? It was 7 years old. Anyway, we reformatted the drive and it still works. But I bought a new SATA hard drive anyway.

I load Windows XP again onto the SATA. It works great for about a week, and then things start failing. When I restart Windows, CHKDSK automatically runs and it starts deleting drivers. I eventually can't even load Windows anymore.

So again I try to reload Windows. Sometimes it works for a day before things start failing. Sometimes it screws up during install. So I figure I have a bad Windows XP CD or a bad CD-ROM drive that is just skipping over files. But then my friend suggested I change out my IDE cables. I install new IDE cables, while also using a different Windows XP CD. Everything works perfect!

For about a week. Then I noticed my new SATA drive clicking whenever I tried to run heavy stuff, like graphic intensive games, or several video/sound related programs. And the sound would cut out every once in a while or get scratchy (which I attributed to a bad onboard sound card). And now, last night, CHKDSK ran itself automatically again and began deleting drivers. I've backed up all my files onto an external drive, but I know I have to reload Windows yet again, because most of my programs don't work anymore.

What do you all think? Bad motherboard (Asus P4P 800-E)? Bad power supply? Even something as rare as a BIOS virus? I can't imagine it's a hard drive problem with all the swaps I've done. I swapped out RAM chips so I think they're okay. New IDE cables. CD-ROM drives work fine with other discs. It's hard for me to test the alternatives because I don't have the parts to keep swapping stuff out, and I also don't want to send my computer into a techie so they can charge me $120 to tell me I need to buy a new computer.

I'm at work so I can't list specs, but I could do that when I get home. If I can still access the internet

~Normy

 

It sounds like you dont have enough ram, the hard drive is clicking because it is using the page file to keep up with the game, the first issues i think you took care of. ed

 

clicking? Sometimes clicks are bad, like when your hard drive head is crashing, but that's unlikely cause your hard drive is new.