Computer Problems

[Dunbar]

Been having a lot of problems with my desktop machine. Started with what sounded like the click of death followed by the computer rebooting. The monitor will randomly go blank and than everything comes back. Also get a lot of weird erros when starting programs. I made a bootable floppy with Maxtor Power Max on it and did a full scan on both HD's and it came back fine. Any ideas how to troubleshoot this further? It's a 5-yr old home built machine, main (Windows drive) is an 80GB Maxtor two years old. Also have a 120GB WD for storing files.

Edit: I got a new hard drive from work, did a fresh Windows XP install on it and now I'm getting the same errors when loading up Firefox and Outlook Express. The Firefox "error report conents" says Exception information Code: 0xc0000005 Flags: 0x00000000 Record: 0x0000000000000000 Address:0x0000000009112da. It has to be some other hardware problem. The CPU is running around 40C, no blue screens. What's the best way to troubleshoot.

 

[moosey]

What are the system's specs?

 

[Dunbar]

MSI KT266A motherboard
Athon XP 1600+
512MB Crucial RAM
ATI Radeon 9600 Pro
80 GB Maxtor HD (Windows Primary Master IDE)
120 GB WD hd (File Storgae, Secondary Master IDE)
Pioneer DVD Burner (Secondary Slave IDE)

Just did the click-of-death reboot thing again, now Firefox doesn't work either.

 

[ScrapSilicon]

Originally posted by: Dunbar
80 GB Maxtor HD (Windows Primary Master IDE)

Just did the click-of-death reboot thing again, now Firefox doesn't work either.

back that thing up !

 

[moosey]

Originally posted by: ScrapSilicon

Originally posted by: Dunbar
80 GB Maxtor HD (Windows Primary Master IDE)

Just did the click-of-death reboot thing again, now Firefox doesn't work either.

back that thing up !

Yeah, I'd do that

 

[Dunbar]

I've already made an Acronis image of the drive. I image every 6 months and all of my files are backed up on another drive. I'm more concerned with finding the cause of the problem.

 

[ScrapSilicon]

Originally posted by: Dunbar
I've already made an Acronis image of the drive. I image every 6 months and all of my files are backed up on another drive. I'm more concerned with finding the cause of the problem.

Maxtors appear to have issues wherein they go kaput shortly after the 1 yr warranty(older series) expires ...you got 2 yrs out of it ..feel lucky..my dead/dying drive pile is one WD 160JB and 4 Maxtors sized from 80 to 160 all pata ..current fave drives are Hitachi and Seagate

 

[Dunbar]

Edit: I got a new hard drive from work, did a fresh Windows XP install on it and now I'm getting the same errors when loading up Firefox and Outlook Express. The Firefox "error report conents" says Exception information Code: 0xc0000005 Flags: 0x00000000 Record: 0x0000000000000000 Address:0x0000000009112da. It has to be some other hardware problem. The CPU is running around 40C, no blue screens. What's the best way to troubleshoot.

 

[Dunbar]

It's a bad stick of RAM, took it out and the computer runs fine. That's the second stick of RAM to fail on me in the past two years.