Okay,
I have had the worst experience trying to fix my computer. It all started a few weeks ago when my computer started to get really choppy and freeze. Pretty soon, I couldn't get it to boot into Windows (it would freeze during the Splash screen). I was able to get it up and running in safe mode for a few days before it finally died on me. I attempted to reinstall windows on the drive, but it froze during the install every time and I heard the nasty "clicks" from the hard drive. I should probably mention that this hard drive was a 30 GB Maxtor that was the master on my Primary IDE channel.
Well, I bought a new 250GB Seagate SATA HD to replace it. I hooked it up to the primary SATA Channel (btw...I had removed the Maxtor at this point). Anyways, it took me a while to get Windows Installer to even recognize the drive (I had problems with the SATA drivers on the floppy).
At this point I've had a plethora of problems....I don't really even know where to start.
At first the new SATA drive was being recognized by the bios on startup, but not by the Windows Installer. I thoguht that this might be due to a loose cable or cruddy power connection. I essentially swapped it's location with the other SATA drive I had (which just contains a bunch of files) and it was recongnized by Windows Installer (the other SATA drive was always recognized).
Anyways, sometimes when I get to the selection about where I want windows to install (which partition), it says that it cannot access my new drive. Which I find to be quite strange. After a few attempts, however, I got the new drive to be listed and I installed Windows on it. Rather, I tried. It froze twice in a row when there were "23 minutes" left on the install. The next time, I jiggled the mouse and it never did freeze, although it froze for a few seconds at a time throughout the later stages of the install. Furthermore, I recieved a few error messages saying that desktop.ini was corrupt and some other errors existed...somethign I've never seen when Installing windows, which I've done many times. I got into Windows....and it seemed to be fine. I could move the mouse around and got into all my hard drives that were installed. However, I still needed to format the other part of my new HD (I made two partitions on the new HD). I went to format it and it got about two blocks before it stopped moving. I cancelled and it said that the drive could not be formatted. I next right-clicked on "My Computer" and went to "manage" and then to "disk manager", where the computer froze. I turned it back on, but it couldn't load into windows saying that some strange file (that I've never heard of...can't remember it) was missing and windows couldn't load.
I went to go to windows installer again, and now it says that windows cannot access my new sata hard drive.
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Does anyone have any ideas as to why I could be experiencing these rip-your-hair-out problems? I thought that the slave HD on my primary IDE channel might be causing an error, but I uplugged it and I have the same problems. A friend of mine suggested that it might be some interoperability issue...but that wouldn't explain the inital problems.
Oh, very important...and I nearly forgot. During my windows installs, my slave HD on the primary IDE channel seemed to make the strange clicking noise, which is why I unplugged it (as it shouldn't even be accessed). Then I began to hear the clicking noise out of my brand new Seagate HD that I was installing windows to. Which seems really really strange. I also don't think that it is a problem with my cd-rom, as I've tried installing from both of them, and I've tried installing from two different versions of windows XP.
------------------
I think that my next step will be to strip down my computer to the basics and try to see if I can get it to work...but the errrors don't make any sense to me...and I've troubleshooted many computers.
Please help if you can. My computers is:
AMD Athlon 2200+
Asus A7N8X Deluxe
ATI Radeon 9500 Pro
ATI TV Wonder PRO
Creative Live! Platinum
2 x 256 MB Crucial Memory
45 GB Maxtor HD (Slave on Primary IDE)
250 GB Seagate HD (Primary on SATA)
150 GB Samsung HD (Secondary on SATA)
Pioneer 16x DVD (Master on Secondary IDE)
Plextor 32/12/10 (Slave on Secondary IDE)
Anyways, I need to take a break as I've really been at it for the past two days...and it's driving me crazy. If you have any ideas or suggestions, I'll happily take them.
Thanks so much...and if you read my whole post then I'm amazed since I now realize how much I wrote.
I really appreciate the help. I need my computer up pretty badly.
Sincerely,
Perfection
I have had the worst experience trying to fix my computer. It all started a few weeks ago when my computer started to get really choppy and freeze. Pretty soon, I couldn't get it to boot into Windows (it would freeze during the Splash screen). I was able to get it up and running in safe mode for a few days before it finally died on me. I attempted to reinstall windows on the drive, but it froze during the install every time and I heard the nasty "clicks" from the hard drive. I should probably mention that this hard drive was a 30 GB Maxtor that was the master on my Primary IDE channel.
Well, I bought a new 250GB Seagate SATA HD to replace it. I hooked it up to the primary SATA Channel (btw...I had removed the Maxtor at this point). Anyways, it took me a while to get Windows Installer to even recognize the drive (I had problems with the SATA drivers on the floppy).
At this point I've had a plethora of problems....I don't really even know where to start.
At first the new SATA drive was being recognized by the bios on startup, but not by the Windows Installer. I thoguht that this might be due to a loose cable or cruddy power connection. I essentially swapped it's location with the other SATA drive I had (which just contains a bunch of files) and it was recongnized by Windows Installer (the other SATA drive was always recognized).
Anyways, sometimes when I get to the selection about where I want windows to install (which partition), it says that it cannot access my new drive. Which I find to be quite strange. After a few attempts, however, I got the new drive to be listed and I installed Windows on it. Rather, I tried. It froze twice in a row when there were "23 minutes" left on the install. The next time, I jiggled the mouse and it never did freeze, although it froze for a few seconds at a time throughout the later stages of the install. Furthermore, I recieved a few error messages saying that desktop.ini was corrupt and some other errors existed...somethign I've never seen when Installing windows, which I've done many times. I got into Windows....and it seemed to be fine. I could move the mouse around and got into all my hard drives that were installed. However, I still needed to format the other part of my new HD (I made two partitions on the new HD). I went to format it and it got about two blocks before it stopped moving. I cancelled and it said that the drive could not be formatted. I next right-clicked on "My Computer" and went to "manage" and then to "disk manager", where the computer froze. I turned it back on, but it couldn't load into windows saying that some strange file (that I've never heard of...can't remember it) was missing and windows couldn't load.
I went to go to windows installer again, and now it says that windows cannot access my new sata hard drive.
=====
Does anyone have any ideas as to why I could be experiencing these rip-your-hair-out problems? I thought that the slave HD on my primary IDE channel might be causing an error, but I uplugged it and I have the same problems. A friend of mine suggested that it might be some interoperability issue...but that wouldn't explain the inital problems.
Oh, very important...and I nearly forgot. During my windows installs, my slave HD on the primary IDE channel seemed to make the strange clicking noise, which is why I unplugged it (as it shouldn't even be accessed). Then I began to hear the clicking noise out of my brand new Seagate HD that I was installing windows to. Which seems really really strange. I also don't think that it is a problem with my cd-rom, as I've tried installing from both of them, and I've tried installing from two different versions of windows XP.
------------------
I think that my next step will be to strip down my computer to the basics and try to see if I can get it to work...but the errrors don't make any sense to me...and I've troubleshooted many computers.
Please help if you can. My computers is:
AMD Athlon 2200+
Asus A7N8X Deluxe
ATI Radeon 9500 Pro
ATI TV Wonder PRO
Creative Live! Platinum
2 x 256 MB Crucial Memory
45 GB Maxtor HD (Slave on Primary IDE)
250 GB Seagate HD (Primary on SATA)
150 GB Samsung HD (Secondary on SATA)
Pioneer 16x DVD (Master on Secondary IDE)
Plextor 32/12/10 (Slave on Secondary IDE)
Anyways, I need to take a break as I've really been at it for the past two days...and it's driving me crazy. If you have any ideas or suggestions, I'll happily take them.
Thanks so much...and if you read my whole post then I'm amazed since I now realize how much I wrote.
I really appreciate the help. I need my computer up pretty badly.
Sincerely,
Perfection
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