major problems...

Ok so this is what's going on...
My computer keeps freezing up(sometimes after several minutes of using and sometimes right at the start), once I restart it - sometimes the monitor gets sync and sometimes it doesn't. Even after it gets sync sometimes the computer just freezes up during the loading of windows.

I think this has something to do with an extra hard-drive I installed from an old computer. The drive is a SEAGATE BARRACUDA 120GB model. ST3120026A
- I connected this drive using IDE since this one doesn't have sata support. I have another drive a MAXTOR 6Y160M0 which is connected through sata. When I go to the BIOS and turn the seagate off the computer works but sometimes freezes up also(not as often as with the seagate turned on).

Also this problem might have something to do with my video card? Because sometimes the monitor just shows a black screen for a couple of seconds (but still has sync) and then everything comes back - after something like this it takes the computer a minute or two and then it freezes. Also MOV movies appear in b&w even though I know the movies are in color and when i change the settings for video color sometimes it helps for a moment and then it gets all weird again.

My computer has a new PSU,an abit aa8 durmax mobo, 1gb of ram, an xfx nvidia geforce 6600gt (256mb ram), and a 3.4 ghz cpu

Hope you can help thanx

 

what os are you running on your pc?
is the second harddrive set to slave?
is the first harddrive set to master with slave attatched instead of single drive?
is this pc custom built?
have you cleaned your system in a while?
-antivirus
-antispyware
-defrag
-msconfig
-run ccleaner

 

Running Win XP Pro
Second harddrive is Master on secondary ide channel (it's slave is a dvd-rw) for some reason the computer wouldn't recognize it if it was set the other way around.
The first hard drive is set to master on the primary ide channel. don't know if it's set as a single drive...
My pc is custom built.. I just formatted my HD and installed a fresh copy of windows.
I backed up my data on the Seagate drive.
My psu is 620w IstarUSA and i used seagate's tools to check both harddrives and it said that they both had errors (S.M.A.R.T) - although i don't think this is right..
Thanx

 

oh and it's an intel lga 775 cpu...

 

ok, turn off your smart technology in the bios.
unplug your second hdd and remove it from your pc.
boot up the computer, and clean your system as i mentioned earlier.
next, find a program called mhdd. burn it, through it on a disk, pop it in the pc, and reboot. run mhdd on the first hdd and on the right hand side of the screen, write down the data and then post the data you get.

i know it seems like a lot, but it's worth it.

 

will do... thanx...
Just so I understand - why is it important to clean my system if i just installed a fresh one...?

 

when you reinstall software on your system, sometimes you get little broken peices of data that eat up space and memory on your pc. i just always like to do it even if it is a fresh install. i did the error checking feature on ccleaner with a fresh install of xp on my laptop and it came up with 155 errors.

 

ok... so i did what you told me to only there wasn't anything on the right side of the screen and there is no option for me to turn off s.m.a.r.t options in my bios... and mhdd won't work on my primary hd while running windows (for my protection it says)

so what i did was I booted the prog and checked things out hoping that they would be what you wanted to know:
Extended ID showed:
Maxtor 6y160m0 LBA: 320,173,056 BIOS: 80H Cache: 7936kb
Supports: LBA48 HPA AAM DLMC LBA MSI6 DMA (UDMA6, MWDMA2)
SMART: Enabled Selftest: Supported Errorlog: Supported
Security: high, OFF, Size: 156,334 MB

S.M.A.R.T Test showed: VAL-WORST-RAW
ATT #3: Spin up time 204-203-15533
ATT #4: Number of spin up times 253-253-676
ATT #5: Reallocated sectors count: 248-248-52
ATT #6: Read channel margin: 253-253-0
ATT #7: Seek error rate: 253-209-0
ATT #8: Seek time performance: 249-237-38959
ATT #9: Power-On time: 241-241-55941
ATT #10: Spin-up retries: 253-252-0
ATT #11: Callibration Retries: 253-252-0
ATT #12: Start-Stop count: 252-252-675
ATT #99-101: Unknown: 253-253-0
ATT #192: Power off retract count: 253-253-0
ATT #193: Load/Unload cycle count: 253-253-0
ATT #194: HDA Temp: 253-253-44
ATT #195: Hardware ECC recovered: 253-252-2102
ATT #196: reallocate event count: 248-248-5
ATT #197: current pending sectors: 252-252-13
ATT #198: Offline scan UNC sectors: 252-244-1
ATT #199: Ultra ATA CTC Error rate: 198-187-13
ATT #200: Write error rate: 253-252-0
ATT #201: Unknown: 253-252-18
ATT #202: Unknown: 253-193-0
ATT #203: Unknown: 253-252-5
ATT #204: Unknown: 253-252-0
ATT #205: Unknown: 253-203-0
ATT #206: Unknown: 253-252-0
ATT #207: Unknown: 253-252-0
ATT #208: Unknown: 253-252-0
ATT #209: Unknown: 192-192-0

RX: 0 bytes , 0 Sectors (Port 1x0)
CX: 13.6 AAT
AAM=SUPPORTED
HPA= SUPPORTED

 

are both of your hdd ntfs? or are they mismatched like ntfs and fat32?

if not, about the only thing i know to do is,
take out the 2nd hdd, boot to your xp cd, lay down another fresh copy of windows xp. If it seems to be working better, then plug in your second hdd as slave (give the hdd it's own ide cable with nothing else plugged into it). I would pull the data off the second hdd and transfer it to the other hdd. As for disabling the smart technology try using ultimate boot disk. Sorry i'm not much more help than this, maybe someone else can help you more than i can.

 

Thanks Padams. They're both ntfs...
The funny thing is - when I turn it off in the bios (the second hdd) windows still recognizes it and all seems to work well- only rarely do I get frozen...
anyone else have an idea...?

And about the monitor not getting sync?
Thanks in advance...

 

Hey sorry about your monitor issue, i forgot!
Have you tried pulling your video card out and re-seating it?
I had a problem like that before and i re-seated the video card and it fixed it. It's worth a shot if you haven't tried it.

 

Hey, yeah tried that... something really weird is going on here..
I have another computer with an nvidia geforce4 mx 440 and i tried running a program on it that keeps crashing on my new comp - and it works without a prob... im starting to think that maybe (though i have no idea how this could be...) my crashes are connected to my Video card.. any way to check if it's stable or if it's what's causing the crashes? (btw i fixed the b&w issue by returning to an older driver)
thanks

 

no on-board video...
anyone else have a suggestion?