oh no...
i think my drive has crashed *snif snif*
here is the order of events as best i can remember.

1. was installing agpminiport patch, agp4x patch, largepageminimum reg patch, & official leadtek winfast geforece2pro drivers.

2. rebooted to let all things install properly & got win2k bluescreen with paging error in ntoskrnl.exe. UGH.

3. tried to boot using "last known good config" and "safemode". neither worked

4. tried win2k repair function. it locked up.

5. beginning to get more than a little worried

6. hauled out my IBM drive fitness test emergency boot floppy, and ran the test. it didnt even get part way thru... just gave me 0x70. oh no.

7. did a base format which took 1.5 hours.

8. tried reinstalling win2k. i went away for a bathroom break and came back to my PC halfway through the copying of files, locked solid, the PC speaker emitting a constant continual beeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeep.

9. tried the win98 cd also just for kicks. didnt get past file copying either.

10. ran the IBM drive fitness test again... interesting... this time it gave the all clear. 0x00. odd... specially as two windows installs died. HMMMM

11. unplugged the 60gxp

12. tried to install win98 on my secondary backup drive, a 16.8gig 16GP ibm drive, 5400rpm, ata33.

13. first time i tried that it lockedup, second time it went ok... then i had to stop for the nite.

OTHER IMPORTANT INFO.
60GXP in question made NO odd noises at all. ever. just the usual neeeep at spinup. no excessive seeking. no clicking, no whining.

completely non overclocked system. 1200C, 133ram, a7v133, latest 1005A bios.
both drives detected corectly in bios.

QUESTIONS:
i wonder if its my PSU cauzing this? or my ata100 cable? can they do this?
i wouldnt have figured that but the first attempt at an install on my old extreely reliable ata33 16gig drive also failed.
hmmmmm

UGH. i hate this

I'll respect your comments & opinions, even if i disagree with them, Provided you display maturity.

If both your HDDs had problems then it probably isn't your IBM HDD.

It could be the cable (good news), the PSU (not so good), "dirty" power, or ... your mobo (more exactly your HDD controller - very bad news).

Start by trying with other cables.



How terrible is wisdom when it brings no profit to the wise

BIG UPDATE (RE: im f**ked)

did lots of things last nite.
at standard bios settings the sucker refused point blank to install either 98 or 2k on my old drive.

i then swapped out the ata100 cable for a spare ata33.
no fix (this is on my old drive which didnt have problems)
the F word was loudly said.

i then went into my bios and ramped all i could back to slow and safe.
guess what? it worked
9x100, ram set to cas3 agp set slow.
once 98 was happily installed i ramped things back up to stock 9x133=1200. windows runs happily...
but i sense something bad going on in the background as serious sam completely locks up after only a few seconds (video card temps cool).

so i really have no idea what the problem is.
This problem really came out of the blue, and the ONLY bios setting i had changed within the past 2 weeks was the AGP apature size.
now that i have basic windows working ill flash the bios again.

does flashing it clear all my settings too? hope so.

I'll respect your comments & opinions, even if i disagree with them, Provided you display maturity.

Well, most Bioses have a "load default settings" option (or something similar) that puts it back to conservative settings - no need of a bios upgrade for that, although it wouldn't hurt to update the bios.

I would start by checking the seating of every single card on the PC, specially the graphic card and memory modules (even if it appears to be ok, push it again - remember to remove static electricity before this).

After this results I doubt it is from the HDD... (good news).



How terrible is wisdom when it brings no profit to the wise

it sounds like it is overheating.. your cpu ... Or you bought cheap RAM. Overheating and cheap ram i've noticed usually is the culprit for it locking up.

Simple inexpensive places to look would be the cable. replace it with a known good cable. Try and just restore to optimized defualts in the bios. Try downclocking your cpu. (Orpurchase a better fan from swifttech which is available at mwave.com) if all of that doesn't work and still locks up apply for an RMA for your motherboard.

If it was your power supply you would notice your fans slowing down and whatnot. This one guy i know had that problem.

as for dirty power that shouldn't cause a problem because where i work they have very dirty power and all the computers work fine.

In the mean time maybe buy a cheap motherboard for 80 bucks i guess if you wanna do that. I don't know if you have another computer you can use in the meantime. But there ya go good luck!

<A HREF="http://www.anandtech.com/mysystemrig.html?id=9933" target="_new"> My Rig </A>

well i can rule a few of your comments out.

1. overheating processor, NO. the system is 4 months old now, and this problem cropped up out of the blue, have been running for a long time overclocked, with no CPU related problems. max time i did was 4 straight days in a warm room running 100% cpu usage, 55 C.

2. cheap ram. Definately not! its Kingmax PC150 sdram. i can run it at full Cas2 @ 154, so running it at 135 should be a walk in the park.

3. PSU. maybe. regardless, within a week or so im going to hunt down a supplyer that has enermax PSU's and get a 350 or 400W unit. i want that extra fan on the bottom of the PSU.

UPDATE:

system back up and running. problems so far: NILL.
hard drive working fine again. no wierd noises (ever)
running at my usual 9x150=1350 at 1.85V.

i suspect the cauze of this problem was most likely a slightly corrupt bios, or something strange about running at 135 Mhz FSB, or possibly the PSU.

as for a better fan, i got a Tornado Win-7528. all i ahve to do is to get around to installing it. no hurry though, the winfop32-1 is doing fine atm. will probably replace it when the auzzie summer comes about.


I'll respect your comments & opinions, even if i disagree with them, Provided you display maturity.

"i wonder if its my PSU cauzing this? or my ata100 cable? can they do this?"
Not likely. 50% of all IBM HD:s i test have this errorcode..
Erase-disk usualy won't work for more than a short while.

Return it to IBM.

nah! its cool. a reformat and its fine. has been for 2 weeks now.
besides, ive isolated the problem as definately Motherboard specific. i believe its slowly but surely dying.
possibly due to my FSB overclock, and if so i thinks its a complete wuss! piece of crap board.

so currently ive got the problem under marginal control, and my drive is a-ok

Religious wars are 2 groups of people fighting over who has the best imaginary friend.

ya, i got 3 60gxp, 1-40gb/2-60gb. i thought the 40 gig was dying, but ran the test and only got a 0x00 code, darn i did some other tests and found that seein as i got all my pci slots filled, it's hindering performance. i have an older mobo (bx), i run the 40 off of promise ultra100tx2 controller and the 60's off a promise fasttrak100tx2 raid, so time to upgrade.

ewww, put that thing away, you're in public!