Hi all,
Long story, I'll try to be to the point, but it's an odd problem. Please, if you have the time read through, as I could really use the second opinions.
First, System Specs.
P4 2.6ghz
Asus P4PE
Nvidia 6600GT
1gig 2.5-2-2-5(I think) Crucial PC 3200
Maxtor 150gig Diamondmax HD
Liteon DVD-Rom
Generic Power supply
Here's the history. About a year ago, I powered up the computer, and got a "No OS" failure out of the blue after copying a 20gigabyte directory before shuting it off. Fiddled around with it, but it absolutely wouldn't recognize the OS, and after I unplugged it, it wouldn't even recognize the drive. Put in an old IBM 40gigabyte HD I had laying around, which turned out to be dead, and then in frustration plugged the Maxtor back in. Strangely, it worked. Reformated as everything was "Unrecognizable" on the drive, and been good since.
Several weeks ago, the system started acting oddly. One game that had worked suddenly crapped out as soon as the intro video launched, but I attributed it to my messing with DirectX settings. Reset everything and tried reinstalling, but it'd always crap out on the intro.
No big thing I thought, must've triggered something in Dx and can't get it back the way it was.
Then I installed Black and White 2 on the system. It would not launch the game unless I ejected the CD and closed the drive. Strange, but with all the bugs in B&W2 I just assumed it was another bug.
Then I installed Dragonshard, which works perfectly fine on my now main system(4200+). But on the old P4 it did the exact same thing as B&W 2. Wouldn't launch unless I opened and closed the DVD drive.
Well, my classes are finished for this semester and I no longer needed the programming projects I had backed up on the P4, so I went about fixing it.
First thing I did was Scandisk with the check for bad sectors, thinking maybe that might be it. That's where the real trouble started.
It went through the full 5 steps, and then hung after checking the free space. So I restarted the computer. It then went to a screen that said a Critical Master Table was damaged and it would fix it, then it promptly hung on 0%. I restarted again, and immediately got "Disk read error".
So I busted out the WinXp install disk and set it to boot from the DVD Drive. But strangely, it wouldn't boot from the DVD Drive but hung with "Disk Read Error".
So I unplugged the Maxtor and tried again, this time it launched setup immediately, quickly, and without issue.
After fooling around with switching it from Master to Slave and switching from primary to secondary, it finally stopped giving me the "Disk read error" and launched setup. I set it to reformat the drive, and let it do it's thing. It went the whole way through, and then gave me "Unable to format. Disk may be damaged, check plugs" error screen.
Did that consistently a few times, then right back to "Disk read error".
Motherboard recognizes it fine, but I can't get beyond that error.
So, what's the consensus? Bad hard drive or bad motherboard? I'm thinking hard drive, but the whole problem is odd enough, since the DVD drive was acting wonky and no matter how many reinstalls I did on that first game it'd consistently crash, that I was hoping for second opinions.
Long story, I'll try to be to the point, but it's an odd problem. Please, if you have the time read through, as I could really use the second opinions.
First, System Specs.
P4 2.6ghz
Asus P4PE
Nvidia 6600GT
1gig 2.5-2-2-5(I think) Crucial PC 3200
Maxtor 150gig Diamondmax HD
Liteon DVD-Rom
Generic Power supply
Here's the history. About a year ago, I powered up the computer, and got a "No OS" failure out of the blue after copying a 20gigabyte directory before shuting it off. Fiddled around with it, but it absolutely wouldn't recognize the OS, and after I unplugged it, it wouldn't even recognize the drive. Put in an old IBM 40gigabyte HD I had laying around, which turned out to be dead, and then in frustration plugged the Maxtor back in. Strangely, it worked. Reformated as everything was "Unrecognizable" on the drive, and been good since.
Several weeks ago, the system started acting oddly. One game that had worked suddenly crapped out as soon as the intro video launched, but I attributed it to my messing with DirectX settings. Reset everything and tried reinstalling, but it'd always crap out on the intro.
No big thing I thought, must've triggered something in Dx and can't get it back the way it was.
Then I installed Black and White 2 on the system. It would not launch the game unless I ejected the CD and closed the drive. Strange, but with all the bugs in B&W2 I just assumed it was another bug.
Then I installed Dragonshard, which works perfectly fine on my now main system(4200+). But on the old P4 it did the exact same thing as B&W 2. Wouldn't launch unless I opened and closed the DVD drive.
Well, my classes are finished for this semester and I no longer needed the programming projects I had backed up on the P4, so I went about fixing it.
First thing I did was Scandisk with the check for bad sectors, thinking maybe that might be it. That's where the real trouble started.
It went through the full 5 steps, and then hung after checking the free space. So I restarted the computer. It then went to a screen that said a Critical Master Table was damaged and it would fix it, then it promptly hung on 0%. I restarted again, and immediately got "Disk read error".
So I busted out the WinXp install disk and set it to boot from the DVD Drive. But strangely, it wouldn't boot from the DVD Drive but hung with "Disk Read Error".
So I unplugged the Maxtor and tried again, this time it launched setup immediately, quickly, and without issue.
After fooling around with switching it from Master to Slave and switching from primary to secondary, it finally stopped giving me the "Disk read error" and launched setup. I set it to reformat the drive, and let it do it's thing. It went the whole way through, and then gave me "Unable to format. Disk may be damaged, check plugs" error screen.
Did that consistently a few times, then right back to "Disk read error".
Motherboard recognizes it fine, but I can't get beyond that error.
So, what's the consensus? Bad hard drive or bad motherboard? I'm thinking hard drive, but the whole problem is odd enough, since the DVD drive was acting wonky and no matter how many reinstalls I did on that first game it'd consistently crash, that I was hoping for second opinions.
