Computer Dying

[Nyamekye]

Hello, I'm having a bit of trouble and I would like to know if anyone has ever heard of this.

I somehow damaged my computer to the point of no return after installing some fan grills in it and the fans (when installing the fan grills ) must have some how damaged the motherboard. That being said, my computer was completely broken for a while. The bios was about the only thing that would load...and rarely; even the system timer had stopped working.

So, I took the computer apart, and tested the motherboard....and it began to work fine. So then I rebuilt the computer and tried to reinstall my system...

When the system was brandnew (custom build) everything worked fine. However, after and I installed the fan grills it bacame pretty much impossible to install an operating system on the computer. The operating system would install, but updates and everything else need to be carefully installed in a squence to get everything working.

Right now I'm thinking theat the motherboard is failing and that all the mysterious installing and updating errors and servicing erors are coming from the motherboard not running the system properly. What prompts me today to write this message though is that I'm getting

"The device, \Device\Harddisk0\D, has a bad block errors" and "An error was detected on device \Device\Harddisk0\D during a paging operation" errors.

It usually hapens when I'm away fromt the PC and not using it and the PC is idling, not when I'm actually doing anything. I've run check disk and found nothing. I haven't disturbed the hardware recently and I believe that some componet may be just failing. It may be the hard disk but I think the motherboard has more to do with the problem.

I believe everthing above the northbridge of my motherboard is fine and that my south bridge or some device connect to it is the source of the problem. However, I would like to know if anyone thinks the hard drive is also the problem.

The hard drive is a 160gb western digital on an sata port - it is the c drive. I have a samsung dvd/cd burner on another sata port - it is the d drive. The cd/dvd burner is also an IDE drive which is using an IDE to sata converter (maybe that could be failing). Please help, thank you!

 

[Nyamekye]

Okay, so I scanned the hard disk with hd tune at maximum settings and found no errors. The SMART log also list no errors, so I think its coming from the motherboard.

I also moved my hard drive and dvd/cdrom drive over to my Silicon image 3132 controllers that are on the board. After doing so windows seems alot more alert and faster. However, does anyone know if how to get a cd/dvd drive to work on silicon image controllers? Because my cd/dvd drive has disapeared in windows - but the controllers see it on boot.

 

[mujizac]

Regarding your Rom drives, do they show up in device manager with a conflict warning? or nothing at all?

 

[Nyamekye]

My ROM drives didn't show up at all.

I replaced the hard drive with a 40gb ATA 100 seagate and now the computer works perfectly. The seagate is actually infact, running way faster than the 160gb western digital SATA 3.0.

I still need to do some more testing to figure out weather it was the hard drive or the controller though.

 

[Nyamekye]

Well, I think it was the hard drive, my computer was operating fine but the drive wasn't. But what's the point of SMART on a hard drive it it doesn't list when the drive is failing? While it listed 0 errors on the smart logg the drive was infact garbage....

Anyway, thanks for any help.

 

[RebateMonger]

Originally posted by: Nyamekye
But what's the point of SMART on a hard drive it it doesn't list when the drive is failing? While it listed 0 errors on the smart logg the drive was infact garbage....

SMART is VERY conservative (on the side of the drive maker). They didn't want a lot of false warnings that resulted in unnecessary returns.

Did you ever run the WD disk diagnostics against it? There's a Windows version and a "DOS" version. The error messages you were getting definitely indicate a failing hard drive.