Hard Drive Prob?

[Cenus_]

I seem to be having all sorts of probs with my comp

When loading it sometimes crashes with just a blank screen some times with blue screen sceen Failure_loading_notepad_area or something like that, when runing it just frezzes no response what so ever, I dissabled cmos caching and that seem to help but not a lot, and now I'm being dissconected from the net ever 5 minutes.

I'm running XP pro, maxtor hdd, and ADSL modem with pipex.

Please help me, I'm at my tethers end.

Thanks in advance

[fe_man2000]

this could be a number of things mate heres a few things to think about.

1. - when did it start doing this ? after some new installation of software, after somthing crashed or a Hardware upgrade etc.

This may help point to software / hardware issue.

2. Do you have access to working hardware you can temp swop into your PC. E.g swap the memory chips with some OK ones as these can produce crashes etc when there faulty. Swap CPU / graphics card if possible etc. If you have no hardware to swop just remove everything you dont need while testing - e.g CDrom, Soundcard, network card etc.

3. Check the temp - If your PC's getting hot it will crash a lot.

I recently found my Geforce 4 card was almost 2 hot to touch - it turns out it was full of dust/hair and the fan was no longer cooling the chips - so check all your fans/ PSU etc.

4. Check the motherboard drivers are installed OK - reinstall.

5. Set motherboard to normal mode (if its set to turbo or optimal - some motherboard dont have this feature)

6. If its really bad either get another HDD and reinstall windows on to it after removing your normal HDD - just to see if it makes a difference - alternatively if you dont have access to another HDD format and reinstall on your normal one - its the only way to be sure.

How this helps

Ironman

[Cenus_]

Thanks for the sugestions matey, I havent installed anything new hardware wise in a while so I dont think thats it, when it first started happening I noticed the case what very hot near the proccesor, so I cleaned the heat sink and fan and it seems to be ok temp now but still the same probs. I'll give your other suggestions tho, thanks again.

Cenus_

[Termy]

Have you put the HSF back on properly (have to ask) as I had the same probs a few years ago with a pre built unit and it turned out that the HSF was not sitting right on the cpu.

Gave me all sorts of probs, i.e not being able to copy, switching off, resetting, freezing etc.

May be worth checking m8.

[fe_man2000]

Also - if the PC has been running hot and crashed a few times the damage to the windows files may already be done. So if you may find it continues to crash as a few DLL's are corrupted even if other issues are sorted - just somthing to bear in mind.

cheers
Ironman

[Mario87]

If the CPU was getting very hot before you sorted the heatsink it may have damaged the CPU. But I would try a reformat first just to be sure, or a differant HDD.