HDD BSOD mixing new/old HDD, help

Hi all. My computer was been glitch free for a long time. I'm having a BSOD issue at bootup. My HDD is less then 6 months old and has been running fine.

So I currently have a Maxtor 250g 6L250RO drive hooked up by itself as master on the primary channel with a couple of cdroms on the secondary ribbon channel.

I recently found an old WD 40gig drive I had in another computer and networked the old computer up to grab some of those old files. Everything was fine. I recently wanted to get a few more files off it so this time I decided to add that drive as a SLAVE hooked up in the middle spot on the primary ribbon. Everything was ok and got the files fine. I removed the drive and life went on until later that afternoon.

I got a BSOD stop 0x000000f4 (0x00000003, blah, blah) so researched and all forums pointed to this http://support.microsoft.com/kb/330100 which makes sense but I'm not sure if I follow how to correct it.

TO get around the BSOD I had to re-hookup that old drive and everything worked. So I doulbed checked my master/slave arrangement and everything looked good and I even changed out the IDE ribbon like the article states.

Everything was ok for a few days but then this same BSOD comes back periodically. I seems to come as soon as I see my desktop wallpaper and the icons are half refreshing, then I get a hanging, then the BSOD. Sometimes I get good boot and everything works, sometimes not.

I created a new user account just to see if anything on the desktop made the system hang but the new account got the same results.

I d/led a HDD scanner from maxtor and it passed the small scan.

I also reinstalled the video and audio drivers for kicks too.

Oh, the biggest thing is as soon as the desktop wallpaper is visable comes up, I get a "clunk or click" noise similar to a floppy seek but its not the floppy. It almost is like the HDD is stopped abruptly....then I get the BSOD.

When I get a clean bootup, BSOD free, that "clunk" doesn't occur.

The "clunk" only happens once at the wallpaper, never hear any weird noises during regular surfing or gaming.

So I'm hopeful I didn't damage my good 250gig cause its fairly new and was running perfect.

My 250gig is the only drive in there now.

I forgot to mention safemode works fine and never gave a "clunk" ever.

Could anyone offer some thoughts on how to tackle this? Thanks!!

 

So you set the main drive as master? Sure its not CS? I would try a defrag, after that I would probably re install windows, but I am always looking for a good excuse to reinstall windows.

 

It seems that the connection/hard drive has caused a bit of corruption in your 250gb hard drive.
I would start, run, type in CHKDSK /R, TO RUN CHECKDISK.
Then I suggest you start, in safe mode, then go to start, run, type in sfc /scannow, and put your XP[ disc in the rom drive, and click retry every time it comes up. It can take some time, but this will replace any corrupted Windows protected files.

 

I decided to just reformat, it was time anyway.

Thnx for replying all.