I've got hard drive problems....advice needed.

[Endarkened]

For a while, my 40GB IBM 60GXP worked just fine. Then, after a few months, I would be moving files around in My Documents, and for some reason it would just get extremely slow. Simply opening folders in My Documents would take 30 seconds or more, insane with my hardware specs. Strange thing was, it was only in My Documents that I saw such a drastic slowdown. Then, in the past few days it's been acting very strange -- completely restarting my computer for no apparent reason. The first time I noticed it was when I opened Exact Audio Copy. I was going to do some audio ripping so I downloaded it and when I opened it; my computer restarts. I thought it was the program's fault, so I deleted it quickly. Then, last night, I opened up SiSoft Sandra 2001 to check my CPU temps, and as soon as it opened, the computer restarts. Also, I left it on last night, and when I woke up the next morning, I could tell it had restarted again during the night because on the screen was the prompt to enter my boot password. So this morning I ran Norton Virus Scan and found that I was infected with the Nimda virus (not very suprising, considering that I've been sharing files across a campus network the past few months). So, I downloaded the Norton fix for that and took care of it. I thought I had solved all my problems. But no, when I opened up Sandra, *beep* it restarts. Sometimes I am able to get into Sandra w/out it restarting, and when I checked my scandisk log (since it runs it after every self-restart) I saw that scandisk found that the hard drive had been reporting the free space incorrectly, but it had fixed it or something to that effect. I've tried reinstalling Sandra, but that doesn't change anything. So, my question is what's going on? I'm completely baffled and it's getting very annoying. Any light you can shed on this predicament would be highly appreciated.

*update* - Left my computer alone for about ten minutes, heard a beep, looked over and it had restarted again. It's getting ridiculous. Please help.

Sorry to ramble on so long,

-EndarkEnd

*edit* - Changed title to something more descriptive of my problem.

 

[Endarkened]

Still doing it. Though less frequent (every hour or two) it's still completely at random. I think it hates me.

-Endarkened

 

[pillage2001]

<< Still doing it. Though less frequent (every hour or two) it's still completely at random. I think it hates me.

-Endarkened >>



You know what, try lowering your FSB. 🙂

 

[HereThereandEverywhere]

Hmm, not necessarily a HD problem...check in your BIOS if you can get to your CPU temps...it could also be a very very large IRQ conflict (involving your sound card) which is causing a reboot...and if you're on Win2k/XP you might have auto-reboot on BSoD which would prevent you from seeing what's going on...this is just hypothetical though, if you could tell me your OS I might be able to help out more, heck everyone would.

Edit: Yeah, try putting ALL of your overclocks back to standard.

 

[Endarkened]

Yeah, I put all my overclocks back down to default this weekend (even though they were all very stable with CPU temps of 39ºC idle), but it's still doing it. I'm running Windows 98SE as my only OS. It's really strange, because I haven't done anything differently to it at all recently.

Thanks,

Endarkened

*edit* - Wait, I take that last part back. I did install the newest VIA 4 in 1's last Friday -- Could that be causing this? I was previously using the 4.33 version, the latest is 4.36. Also, the random restart thing began after lowering my FSB, 'cause I lowered it to 133MHz on Saturday, and it ran fine all that day. The restarting thing just began yesterday. Maybe I should raise the FSB back up a little? 🙂

 

[Endarkened]

Still doing it. Anyone have any ideas? It's extremely frustrating.

-Endarkened

 

[Chadder007]

I wonder if you still may have a virus on your system....
Also unoverclock your video card and processor, possibly even underclock your processor. If that doesn't help, try to borrow someone else's RAM stick or take one out if you have two and see if the problem persists.

 

[wyvrn]

All of the above plus clean out the dust in your comp and make sure have sufficient cooling.

 

[Ramius]

I had a similar problem when using certain applications. I tried everything from new memory to a new mobo. I finally got it to stop randomly rebooting when I added more memory. I only added an additional 64 stick I had laying around, but it doesn't reboot anymore. I ran NT4 and win2k and it was happening on both OSes. I think that it is tied into memory, something you changed may have effected it?? Just my $.02

 

[Endarkened]

Ok, I reinstalled the old Via 4 in 1's that I was using before I upgraded to the 4.36 version at 3:00 pm today and after 5 hours it hasn't rebooted since. I'll leave it running all night and won't declare it "all clear" till 3:00 pm tomorrow though. I noticed a lot of my games are acting strangely also, but I don't know if that's from the virus or the 4 in 1's. Thanks for all the suggestions.

-Endarkened