Hard-drive failure?

Hey guys,

I recently got a new rig, and bought all the parts from a store in downtown Vancouver. They assembled my components for me and I brought home a brand-new uber computer (at least for my standards ). Everything worked fine for 2 or 3 months, until semi-recently.

One time when I was booting up, a weird sound was coming from my case. It SOUNDED like my hard-drive was thinking really hard for like 15 seconds, and it was freezing my computer during that time. Then it stopped. The noise ended and I could do whatever I want. I overlooked what just happened and didn't count it as a problem..

About a week later, I had the same thing happen, except for longer. It lasted about 20 seconds, then completely froze my computer to the point I had to restart. It made the sound upon rebooting, but the problem fixed itself and I could do whatever I needed. Now I was starting to worry....

Now, just last night, it happened again. Except this time, it froze on boot up after about 30 seconds (I had just gotten into MSN), and I had to reboot. On reboot, windows did a drive scan and fixed problems. It said there was 4 files in 'bad sectors', but it said it fixed them so I thought that was a good thing...

Upon reboot, it can no longer get past post. It detects all my hardware just fine, boot priority is all good, but as soon as it tries to load the windows screen, it just reboots. It keeps rebooting until I turn off the power.

I have no idea what has gone wrong. Here are my specs, so hopefully someone can point me in the right direction. It seems to me like the hard-drive crashed, if I can get all the way through post.

Windows XP
AMD 3800+ CPU
1024MB PC3200 DDR
ATI 850XT 256MB graphic card
WD 250GB hard drive (RAID setup)
LanParty24 Mobo (will get specs if required)

But yah, basically, there were no real problems up to this point, and it has been working like a dream. Anyone got any tips?

Thanks in advance,

--Kibb

 

I'm almost certain your hard drive started gradually developing bad sectors (as one scan indicated). If you see at least a glimpse of Windows, you have passed POST, and I suspect this is what's happening. Windows (something in there) got corrupted, so it either explicitly reboots or blue-screens on startup (and reboots as a result). You can try to boot in Safe Mode as TimW suggested. It won't change anything as far as the hard drive goes though. You may want to test the disk(s) using something like MHDD (google for this). If the disk is going bad, either fix it once and for all and reinstall Windows (if you can't fix it), or try to return it for a replacement. Bad sectors are... bad. Sometimes one (or 10) pops up, you fix them, and that's the end of the story. Other times, the disk just seems to gradually deteriorate, so more and more bad sectors keep developing. That's the time to change disks. And the way to know for sure is with MHDD (well, that's my way).

Good luck!

Michel
Alventis Universal Information Manager

 

I'll try and do safe-mode and let you know what happens. Thanks for the tip.

--Kibb

 

I selected safe mode, but as soon as I chose it, it restarts the computer again.

So the problem seems to be a faulty HD? It's fairly new (3 months), so should I try and claim warranty on it? The shop gives me 1 year I think, will have to find the papers.

Thanks in advance,

--Kibb