Bad hard drive?

[ninjazed]

Well that's what I think it is. What does you all think? Friends system = MSI K7T266 Pro ver. 2 m/b, Athlon 1600, IBM 20GB and ASUS A7100 vid card. It was running like a demon after I built it. A year later and the OS won't fire up. I try to wipe the HD clean and start over, right? Partitioning and formatting go OK and then I start getting multiple error reads from the clean and legit WinXP CD. Alot of .dll files (and a few .ocx?)won't copy. I get a few messages telling me there may be a problem with the CD but it's clean as a whistle. I change CD drives and eliminated the possibility of a bad CD drive. After a few force feeds and plenty skipped files the whole thing crashes with a fatal BSOD. Almost sounds like a no brainer, the DeskStar is toast. But before I go ahead and order a new HD I figured I'd run this by everyone to see if minds greater than mine could think of some other, more obscure explanation. Thanks everyone.

 

[DTSS]

Have you though about replacing the memory in the computer? I had the exact same problem! Replaced a stick of memory, and the install went fine. Remember; Xp is a resource hog, Even during installation. If you happen to have faulty memory, thats a good time for it to fail!


Daryl - DTSS

 

[snidy1]

probably memory, if you have an extra stick, test it.

 

[Insidious]

Go Here and download the software that will test your HD for you.

That should save you some time and effort..... Good Luck!

IBM drives are now Hitachi (it's the drive fitness utility you want..... I think )

 

[ninjazed]

Thanks for the quick response everyone. I downloaded the Hitachi HD test and the drive came up OK! I then downloaded two memory test utilities. The first one (?) wouldn't even load for "CRC" errors. I'm running MemTest now (it's a time consumer) and it's already showing all sorts of errors. Wow. I never had a stick of RAM just go plop out of the blue on a non-overclocked machine, but it is generic stuff. I know, I shoulda known better but I was trying to cut $$ corners when I built the thing. Shame on me. Thanks again for the help, you folks are the greatest!

 

[DTSS]

Ya, most of my experiences w/ BSOD during install has been do to bad memory.

Goodluck !