Strange problem after really hot day

[shud]

Ok, let me run through the facts here. This weekend I was out of town. Our A/C went out on Sunday, my roommates didn't do anything. I got back on Monday afternoon to find still nobody had called to get it fixed and my room was at 99F. Awesome. My computer was at 46-49C, which I wasn't aware was a super dangerous level.

Anyway. I used it fine Monday, after turning it off for a while until our A/C was fixed. Tuesday afternoon Iget home from work and it locks up on me. I'm thinking ok random lock up. Reboot...locks up again like 10 minutes later. This keeps happening.

I boot Knoppix Live and it identifies all but 1 HDD. Can see files, can make transfers, etc. Strange that the 1 HDD cannot be seen. After transfering some stuff using Knoppix I reboot today. Windows boots fine (previously it would not go past loading screen)...strange. All hard drives are recognized! I can also view and move files from all of them.

But wait...still locking up. Ugh. I don't get it. Computer is at about 36C at this point. I decide to boot DFT to run some tests on my drives (one of my two Seagate SATAs is making a "ping" sound every now and then, I'm still not sure which one, but I suspect it's my OS drive as it's freezing when it pings). Will NOT boot. Goes to "Loading PC DOS" or whatever. Tried a few copies of DFT and no dice.

Rebooted to Windows, messed around. Right after one of the drives pinged (sounds like when you bend a springy doorstop and then let it go) and it locked up about 3 seconds later.

If it's a hard drive problem, how come I can't boot a DFT from a CD?? Additionally, I'm now getting a "choose OS" dialog on boot. One of the versions is another version of Media Center that gives me an error if I select it, the other boots Windows ok (or attemps to).

I'm really, really lost.

EDIT: I have tried multiple DFT discs as well as multiple optical drives. These are not the problem. Have reset CMOS to no avail.

EDIT2: Additionally, Memtest86 is easily bootable.

More and more this is looking like a bad SATA controller, or a bad hard drive.

 

[Lord Evermore]

Sounds like one of the drives may be be lurching around, clutching its chest, trying to reach its LifeAlert button. Maybe the pinging is LifeAlert psychically paging you, the nearest EMT, while you callously ignore it.

First rule: stop using the system, stop trying to boot to Windows. Every time you touch it, you're risking further damage. Even running a scan with the software is going to risk completely killing it, so you might want to immediately start doing a backup of both drives, unless you managed to get all the important stuff with Knoppix. Not being able to see one of the drives may or may not have been a symptom of these problems.

The head arms on the drive are spring-loaded (so they snap back to the safe area if you lose power), maybe it came loose from the heat and that's the springy sound you hear. If it interfered intermittently with the arm travel, it could cause a crash.

The low temperatures at the thermal probes don't mean there weren't some serious hotspots if the room was 99 degrees, it just means there was some great airflow past those probes, and presumably the CPU cooler did a great job. 99 degrees by itself is dangerous territory, but not unsurvivable (the a/c failed AND the backup failed at my office a few months ago, the racks were reading over 100F for awhile, eventually things started crashing).

I've had problems with all the drive maker's software except for Maxtor's PowerMax, usually with them not booting, and IBM's DFT was the worst. At the very least, try something besides just DFT, particularly try the one that matches your drive brands.

Do you actually have MCE installed on that system? That's a fricking weird problem for it to magically decide to give you a boot menu to an OS you don't have installed, but not unheard of for Windows to "fix" the boot.ini file that way I think.

 

[shud]

Yeah, I have MCE installed...that's not what was confusing me. Just the fact that bootup decided that there were 2 versions. I have no idea where that came from.

My guess is that my OS drive (it's an 80gb refurb I got when I RMA'd ANOTHER 80gb drive) is, like you said, on its last legs here. I've stopped using it after I heard the sound and it immediately locked up. I got most of the important stuff off of it. The only thing I really wish I had done was convert my iTunes library to XML so I could port it over to my next install and not have to reformat my iPod again.

 

[Lord Evermore]

Well if you can't RMA it, it can't hurt to keep futzing with it and try to recover the data.

 

[shud]

I already put an order at Newegg for a non-Seagate 250gb SATA drive. Should be here Friday. I'll try installing Windows to that and see if I can get it to not freeze after like 5 minutes.

I'm going to try like hell to RMA this again, although I'm not too confident about putting data on it - though it's my only small drive, and I like to keep my OS drives small so that I don't tend to put crap on them.