Hard drive crash?

[leichaolan]

Hi guys. Quick but annoying problem. Every now and then when I leave my pc on, it doesn't start back up again when I shake the mouse or press the keyboard. Just a blank blue screen on the monitor. (not the bsod just a dark blue screen of nothing). I shut off the machine and start it back up. Sometimes it works again, other times it can't find my Hard drive. When it can't, I just shuffle around the IDE cables and it works again. I suspect it could be my mobo, or my HD. I've got windows set to shut off the HD at 25min, system stand by at 30min, and hibernation at 45min. Considering that the problem NEVER happens when I'm using the machine (only if it's been left on idle), I think it might be the settings messing up my HD. Any thoughts? Thanks in advance.

PS. the settings also include turning off the monitor at about 15min.

AMD Athlon 750
Maxtor 20G HD
WinXP
1st Mainboard KT133.

[randyrhoads1981]

Yeah it could be ..ive never really set my power settings to shut off anything, i always picked "never" shut anything off ..but if this is something you need it could be the advanced power settings in the bios that need some tweaking..or the Windows settings/drivers itself. Others will reply soon and will have alot better details of what to try.

[mjc]

At the best of times the Windows power managemnet settings are not very reliable....

If you have conflicting settings set in the BIOS, then they can be a downright nightmare.

So the first step would be to make sure one of them is disabled...

Overall, it sounds like the typical problems that have plagued Windows power management all along.

[gwallen4]

Yeah. This has happened to me. I'm with Randy, you could set it to never shut down. On one computer I traced it back to the video board. If I set the video to never shut down, it solved the problem. Of course, this is a pain.

Also if you power the computer down completely after it crashes, you probably won't have to diddle with the cables.

[leichaolan]

Thanks for the reply guys. I had the idea of making it so that the HD never goes off, but wouldn't that be bad for the drive? I mean, it has moving parts and everything and it can't be good to leave the computer on for 3+ hours and have the drive spinning away doing nothing. Would it be bad for the drive if I set it to "never"? Thanks again.

[gwallen4]

Definitely would not hurt the drive to be on all the time. A lot of the wear comes from starting and stopping.

Takes a little more electricity is all.