Big system crashes...possibly HD

[MIDIman]

Here's the deal - in the past two days I've installed Cubase 5, Nuendo 1, and Gigasampler on a 4 month old 20Gig Maxtor DiamondMax Plus 40, and I'm beginning to assume this is the problem, as the crashes have been ocurring somewhat randomly since.

Since installing these programs (about 2 or 3 days ago) and when doing very simple disk access, I get either:
1) Blue screen of death - then if I'm lucky, I can hit a key and am back into Windows fine (usually a program or two closes) - or sometimes results in system reboot after hitting any key.

2) All black screen with funny lines across the top, and a reboot within a few seconds.

When I say simple disk access, I mean it - we're talking things like everything from emptying the recycle bin, to deleting a file, to downloading a file in getright, to converting 50 mp3's to wav in a batch script.

I've scandisked and defragged - still have the problem.

Appreciate any advice, though I'd rather not do a reformat right now...anyone know of a good program I can use to check for bad sectors?

How many message do you need to be a Senior? I thought it was 200?

 

[DAM]

try norton disk doctor, and see what that shows.


its 201 post for senior.




dam()

 

[Edski]

First off, are you overclocking your system? Maxtor drives are notorious for not liking that. Second, download Maxblast from Maxtors website and test the drive. There will be three tests: quick, read, and write. Do not run the write test unless you want to blow all your data away and start from scratch. If it passes the first 2 tests, you have about a 95% chance that it is not the drive that is causing the problem. If you get an error code, call their customer service department and get an RMA.

 

[HotWire]

Can you get into your add/remove programs and remove all three programs? Could be that one of these programs was not compatible with your operating system.

 

[MIDIman]

I removed Gigasampler that day, and it appeared to have been fixed until I got a signel blue screen yesterday, but I was under an extremely heavy load, running 5 or 6 CPU intensive programs, adn 2 of them very heavy on HD. I'm definitely ok with that, considering that before it was almost every 30 minutes, and I don't run all of this stuff very often.

I am o/c'ing a Cel 366 to 550, and I think this may be my problem, as I've had it o/ced constantly for the past 2 months - before then I would just switch back and forth between 366 and 500 when I needed it, like for gaming. Its just that here I have a better ambient temp, and its been running extremely stable - save a few glitches every once in a while when it jumps up high for less than a second.

I thought there were problems with using the MaxBlast disk I received with the drive? I don't remember exactly what, but I hate to mess things up further. Is the downloadable a different version?

Thanks.