need advice from you ASUS gurus

[N2gaming]

Greetings,

So my Gigabyte mobo crashed on me so to make a long story short I bought the
Asus P5K and installed it in my rig.

Heres my systems life blood:

1) CPU = e6850 (not OCd)
2) PSU = Antec Treo 650W (fairly new)
3) Memory = four sticks of 1-G Kingston Ballistix DDR2 800
4) 3 SATA HD = each @ 500G
5) Pioneer DVD-RW DVR-212D (POS )
6) Most recent bios (something like Dec.2007)
7) USB gaming mouse and USB gaming keyboard

and least but not last a fresh WinXP install with SP2 and a couple of WinXP updates

A few things that I could use some assistance with, first off, my my HDD light is always being accessed even when not doing anything (its driving me nuts)

and...when I installed the OS (WinXP) I had removed my two 500G 4-month old SATA HDs from the mobo and just left the new 500G SATA HD connected and my DVD burner.

So after going into Windows and loading up the necessary poop I turned off my computer and connected my other two SATA HDs...well, when I went back into WIndows my SATA HD
which was the "C" HD was now labled as the "F" drive...is that normal???

and...when booting up my computer stops about 20 seconds into the POST and notifies me that my S.M.A.R.T. SATA HD #3 is bad and then tells me to press F1 to continue.

Which I do and everything is normal in Windows, the SATA HD is basically new and when in Windows when I check it there it tells me that the SATA HD is fine...should I worry?

Thanks for your help.

P.S. I hate new rebuilds

 

[Xvys]

One reason for unknown cpu usage at idle is what I call the "50% usage bug" and the "100% usage bug", which can quickly overheat your computer. You can inadvertantly d/l this usage bug imbedded in some free web software, especially if you use Internet Explorer without an adequate firewall. I use Mozilla Firefox as a browser instead, thus avoiding 95% of the viruses. Press control/alt/delete to access your Task Manager, and under Processes, check to see what program is using your computer at idle. If you see anything in use other than 99% idle process, then there's your bug. You can end process there, but you will still have to track down the bug with Adaware, ect, or even go into your registry to track it down and eliminate.

I wouldn't worry about the labeling of the hd's. It could be dependant on which sata plug each is using, and it what order they were installed. If your main o/s hd is now F:, I guess you will soon get used to it.

 

[N2gaming]

Thanks for the help. I just checked and its only showing the "99% idle process" so I'm good there, however, its still doing it

Good grief its annoying.

 

[N2gaming]

A little more info now....when I first booted up into Windows my POST screen did say that one of my fairly new SATA HDs was going bad but I didn't trust that warning since it was a brand new install and I was very new with my mobo.

Well, I DLd a pretty neat HDD utility and when I ran it the first thing that it said was that one of my SATA HDs is about to crash...so perhaps that is what is going on with my HD light being used always.