(HD maybe toast) The saga continues

Hi guys,

My question actually starts ferther down, read quotes only if you're curious

Sorry for the long delay, but the comp. is finally working. Turns out my power supply was dying. Switched it, but now comp. seems unstable. Doesn't always boot up on the first shot, and tends to freeze up on me sometimes for no apparent reason not even gaming or doing anything resource greedy. I did a scan disk and repair errors, defragmented, scanned with 2 AV's. I think I might need some more suggestions on how to check HD performance, scan for errors, basically find what's causing theses freeze-ups. I'm gona do more searching to find a program that might possibly aid my diagnostics. I will try your suggestion TimW and check on Western Digital's site right now, actually gona try Western Digital Data Lifeguard Tools 11.0

P.S. Is XP's defrag. any good or should I use another one like IObit SmartDefrag

 

Iobit is way faster and more effective that XP's defrag.

 

Hi guys,
I tried Western Digital Data Lifeguard Tools 11.0, didn't help. I think perhaps it could be the drivers for my graphics card need updating, but I can't chose witch is the best(right) one ther seem to be too many.
I have a Radion 9200 128M card, I'm hesitating between

1.http://www.driverskit.net/drvdisc/get10463.html
or
2.http://ati.amd.com/support/drivers/xp/radeon-prer300-xp.html My guess is this one.

I don't want to mess things up more, so I'm wondering if anybody can tell me witch is the better one. Or if there is another one that I missed.

Could also be I changed something in the bios, I think that could cause freezing during start up. I double checked but everything seems fine. How can I be sure?

Can rebooting a comp. with a faulty powersupply damage a HD?

 

Yes- a faulty power supply can damage anything hooked up to it, including the hard drive. As far as the lockups go, it could be thermal- just as things start to get warm the PC freezes, or it could be a driver or device issue. Have you tried safe mode? If it boots in safe mode, then it's probably a driver problem. If possible, try a different video card. If you have 2 RAM sticks, remove one, then the other. Remove any other devices (modem, LAN card, sound card, etc) and put them back one-by-one to try to narrow down the problem....

 

the first driver you mentioned pops up another page
https://a248.e.akamai.net/f/674/9206/0/www2.ati.com/drivers/Catalyst_611_release_notes.html

which doesnt list your card as being compatible.