Have to keep installing Win XP

[Nooyawkah]

I have been using Windows XP since its release with little or no trouble. I installed it in my and friends computer and no one has experienced any difficulty. My wife runs 4 or 5 apps at the same time and all is well. Her components are pretty close to mine. Recently I bought a new hdd (Maxtor 80GB quiet drive, 7200RPM). The new drive replaced a Maxtor 40GB. I don't believe any other components or software have changed, except for a new Alpha Heatsink. The 1st time I formatted the disk into 2 partitions using Partition Magic 7.0: 60GB for XP (NTFS) and 20GB for Linux (but I left it alone for a future install). I installed Windows with no problems. Then I began to load my programs, the SAME ones I used before. If I recall AOL went in first, then Office 2000, then a couple of others, I forget, then Norton AV (not the rest of the suite). However, I had been using the entire Norton Suite without incident for 6 months. But after reading this forum I only installed the Anti-Virus. Norton would not complete the Install saying it was missing some files. After installing ang uninstalling, Norton still wouldn't work. As it was soon after the initial XP installation I used Parition Magic and wiped things clean. This time I used a full 80GB NTFS partition. Windows XP went in fune but, you guessed it...more problems. This time I put Norton in first, without incident. After installing most of my software, carefully setting restore points after each, then restarting, It was the Creative SB software that caused the problem. Add/Remove and reinstall didn't help. Other programs stopped working and then came install #3. This time I let Windows partition itself. The next time Microsoft Money got me. Last night, all was well 'till I came to my Second Nature screensavers. They have always functioned well and do not used any sound or dancing icons and cursors. In the middle of installing those disks and rebooting, my task bar showed up as blue rectangles where the start bar should have been, the icons that start up at booting, etc. I could notuse the start menu. After a number of restarts I put Win XP in to repair itself. It did so but now the welcome screen opened slowly and some programs would not work. This morning I have a fresh NTFS install with no programs. What the hell is wrong here? Is the new hdd bad, am I having software conflicts even though none have changed, am I an idiot, one of the above, all of the above? The computer is running at normal temps. Here are the components: Athlon 1800+, 512 DDR 2100 Crucial Ram, Nvidea GForce 3 Ti200, ABIT KR7A Mob, 430 Antec PSU.

[RKBA]

Aside from replacing Norton AV with Grisoft's AVG, and replacing WinXP with Win2K (which is what I did when I got fed up with the problems Norton was causing, and got tired of reinstalling WinXP - things have been working smoothly since then BTW), the only things I can think of to check are the "usual suspects", ie:

1. Download the HDD manufacturer's disk diagnostics and run them. On two separate occasions so far on two separate drives, when my hard drives seemed to be taking an extraordinarily long time to read/write I ran the manufacturers diagnostics and it indicated one or more sectors were bad even though Windows hadn't given any indication of a problem. I erased the disk using the manufacturers utility (which also either refreshes the bad sectors, or marks them as bad and I assume replaces them with spares), and then partitioned and formatted it with Partition Magic, and haven't had any problems with either of them since then (apparently IBM HDD's aren't as good as I had hoped). If the only thing that has changed is the addition of the Maxtor drive, it would be highly suspect in my book. You might reseat the hard drive cables and check the RAM to make sure it's all seated properly. I once inadvertently bumped a HDD cable connector slightly askew while adding some RAM. The drive didn't fail outright (most of the pins were apparently getting good enough contact for the HDD to operate) but it just gave erratic performance. All it took was a push on the HDD connector to get it back into place and everything working fine (It's ALWAYS the @#$%^&* connector!).
2. Check the WinXP Event Log at the first sign of trouble. Sometimes it can hold a clue.
3. Check the Device Manager settings to make sure all devices and drivers are installed correctly and that there aren't any hardware or IRQ conflicts.
4. Try booting up in Safe Mode to see if a device driver is causing the problem. If Safe Mode works Ok, then it's probably a device driver.
5. Run a RAM test (unlikely, but never hurts to check).


-- Ron

P.S.
If it's an ATA drive, remember that you need an 80 wire cable (not a 40 wire cable like EIDE uses), and that the Blue connector is supposed to connect to the motherboard, and the Gray and Black connectors are supposed to connect to the master and slave drives - though I forget which is which offhand. The HDD drive documentation should tell you.

[Nooyawkah]

I'll try all that stuff tomorrow. Which key do you use on bootup to get into safe mode? And where do I find the event log?

[RKBA]

1. Which key do you use on bootup to get into safe mode?

F8

2. And where do I find the event log?

Control Panel -> Administrative Tools -> Event Viewer


BTW, Maxtor drives seem to have a reputation for being unreliable, and I'm not too fond of the five IBM Hard Drives I have installed either. Next time I buy a HDD, I plan to stick with Western Digital.

-- Ron

[Gallaeglagh]

Dang, NYKr you've had a lot of problems lately! Reminds me of myself a couple years back where I needed to try everything to figure it out. Good Luck

[Nooyawkah]

You've certainly captured me in a few swntences. It seems like when all goes well Im have to try something new. I'm really enjoying learning this stuff. However, I do get into trouble ... quite a bit of it.

[ErnieK]

Nooyawkah
Like you I am having trouble with my XP. I also have a Maxtor drive in (see my post for dual booting) and PM7. This drive is only a couple of weeks old. Everything was fine with me until my 16 month old Fujitsu drive went ta-ta's and I bought the Maxtor. XP ran ok until I had to replace the drive. So maybe it is the drive's or could it be that Maxtor does not like Partition Magic? It's a thought!

[Nooyawkah]

Here's the latest saga. I tried everything suggested by you guys, by friends, etc. I figured I would try the ckhdsk thing and damned if it didn't find bad sectors on the drive. That's as far as I went because the drive is only a couple weeks old. Newegg is so reliable I'm certain they'll take it back. In fact, I had emailed them yesterday with a "what if" question. The response was to just ask for a RMA. I was so tired of this that on my way home from work today I bought the same 60GB 7200RPM drive my wife uses with the same mobo with no problems. I'll install it tomorrow, and if it works I promise I won't open the case again 'till I make a major upgrade next year sometime (it's in my blood now, and AMD is releasing that new chip so I'd need a new mobo and the type of RAM will change, and....lol). Thanks all for your help. If you don't hear from me within the next week then I guess all went well