win xp boot disk failure

I have started having problems with windows xp..my computer boots up ok and runs ok until i leave it idle for about 15 minutes.. then the screen goes black and the message "boot disk failure" comes on.. if i shut it off..using on off button... it boots back up ok and is fine until it is left idle again.. I have a hp pavilion 533w...running win xp service pack 2.. 1.73 ghz, 224 mb of ram.. i would appreciate any and all help...

 

Hi and welcome to MajorGeeks.

First thing to check is your hard drive.

Download the disk manufacturer's utility to check it's integrity.

We have most available here in the downloads section.

 

Thank You for the welcome.. however, I do not know much about computers.
When I checked for the hard drive name to get the utility to check it, all i got was.. ST360020A.. I went to the hp home page to see if i could get something from there, it scanned my computer and said i did not have any hp products .. so where do i look for a utility to check out the hard drive???

 

I wonder if a BSOD is happening with an auto restart.

Right click on MY COMPUTER, select properties

OR press the windows key + Pause/Break

Now, click on the advanced tab

Select "settings" under "Startup and recovery"

Uncheck "Automatically restart".

Press OK, then OK again.

Wait the 15 mins or so, does a blue screen show up?

If you need more help with this, please replay, and someone can help you. On the other hand, if this doesn't help, then yes, Insomniac is on to something......

 

sounds like a maxstor, max blast is the disk utility you are looking for.

Sounds like a suspend error, go to control pannel under power settings and see if suspend to disk is checked off if so uncheck it. then leave it and see what happenes, if it does it again, go to the same place under power settings change the computer from what ever it is under system to "always on" and then see what happens.

 

Also i wonder if the hp printer is being shut down by windows on entering stand by and is not able to restart.

Right click on My Computer
Left Click on Proprties
Left Click on Hardware Tab
Left Click on Device Manager
in the list you will find 5 entries of USB Root Hub
Right Click on Each of them
Left Click on Properties
Left Click on Power Management Tab
Uncheck the option " Allow windows to shutdown this device to save power "
Do this on all 5 root hubs
Then Click Apply & ok
Restart Comp.
Upon restart press F2 or F10 ( Which ever is the key to enter Setup )
then in the BIOS chk for something called USB Emulation.
If you have USB Emulation . If you have Emulation. Set it to " No Boot "

Also Try disabling Screen Saver ( Just a thought ) !

Let us know if this helps.

 

I will try all of these suggestions and thank you... will post again if it does not help.

 

Back again...I tried the ideas and still got the boot disk failure but before that there was a blue screen that said KERNAL STACK IMPAGE ERROR...stop oxoooooo77 dump of physical memory.. there was other stuff about new downloads of software or install of new hardware... only thing that was downloaded was xp updates and the avg anti virus updates...the computer was down for more than a month because i was away... the xp home that is installed is not the software that came with the computer..i bought the xp home about 6 - 7 months ago and did a clean install... had no problems till now... oh yea... and i can not seem to get into bios by pressing either F2 or F10..or safe mode by f8... it just goes back into windows... HELP........and... i can't seem to find the max blast to check out the hard drive.....

 

got the blue screen again and this time got more of it.. it said to disable bios memory options, such as caching or shadowing...atapi.sys address F9E22384 base at F9E15000 Daestamp 4167b4d...beginning dump of physical memory.. i did finally get into safe mode and set it to start computer using the last known good config... just waiting to see what happens now...

 

well, doing the last good config did not help... still getting the blue screen with kernel data inpage error... any more ideas from anyone??

 

You still haven't checked your hard drive. If you can't find MaxBlast, it's available HERE with instructions.

As far as the memory dump, Adrynalyne's written a guide on how to debug HERE.

If you still aren't sure, attach the memory dump and someone who has the tools installed can look at it for you.

 

I downloaded maxblast..checked out hard drive..did not find anything wrong with drive..checked out the other site about memory dump..did not try to do anything with that ..yet.. but did go in and try other things that were advised.. enabled screensaver again.. have 2 users on the computer.. on both logins.. left computer on all day yesterday... on and off line.. and it did not give me the kernel data inpage error again nor the boot disk failure ..dont know why or how it seemed to work ok again..going to leave on today again and make sure not just a one day thing... thanks for the help.. may be back for more but sure hope not....

 

Good luck, these things can be very difficult to isolate.