Another "HELP ME PLEASE!" thread- Detailed.

[RX7-2nr]

alright- im playing need for speed most wanted, in the middle of a race that i was actually finally winning- when my screen froze and the audio started skipping. hmmmmm.

i tryed a couple things and nothing worked so i turned the computer off. when i turned it back on it POSTed and went to the Windows XP loading screen. it sat there for about 15 seconds, then the screen flashed blue with a ton of white text (i say flashed because the blue screen was up for less than a second- much less) the computer immediatly rebooted itself when the blue screen dissapeared, but the same exact thing happened- rebooted halfway through the loading.

i turned it off and back on. it POSTed and brought up the Windows screen saying that one of my drives needed to be checked for consistancy. it went ahead and checked. it said somthing about bad sectors- dont remember exactly. after the CHKDSK was through- it rebooted itself again. still never made it past the loading screen. i tryed to boot in safe mode. it said some required files were missing and sat at a black screen with nothing but safe mode in the corners.

i started thinking that some of the windows files were corrupted. i happened to still have my old computer sitting around with nothing but windows ME on the drive, so i took the hard drive out of it. (i hadnt even thought of file format problems) i put it in my new machine as the master, and changed the one with the supposed "missing files" as the slave. my main worry about all of this is that i may lose my data from the drive. i have countless hours- months of work in 3D studio max saved on that drive. it would be horrific to lose it- unexplainably horrific. i want to get those off the drive as fast as possible. it still wouldnt load anythign though. hmmm

so i take the possibly corrupted drive out, leaving the drive with ME on it in my new machine still as master. i figure ill get it to load before i put the other drive in. the machine did the EXACT thing. it didnt even have the possibly corrupted drive attached. this time it brought up the ME loading screen and rebooted itself. WTF! !@#!@!$

so i start thinking it is a problem with the the processor or somthing. i had it OCed from 2800+ to 3200+ (200x11). temperature never got over 47- never. i also had the video card overclocked from 225mhz to 265mhz. neither of these are drastic OCs at all.

i really dont have a clue. i dont care if i have to buy new components (except the hard drive) i just want to files on the hard drive to be intact and not harmed at all.

please help. any advise would be awesome.

Athlon XP 2800+
ASUS A7V600-X
2gb Geil DDR 400
160gb WD UDMA<--the offending drive
256mb nVidia 5700LE

i built this system less than 2 years ago- never had problems with it at all

[RX7-2nr]

oh yeah- i dropped the clock speed to the factory 2083mhz after it hung up the first time. no change in the problem.

[myPCrocks]

You cannot just take one hard drive from one machine to another especially different Os's. If in fact during the check disc it said "bad sectors", it means your hd is failing. Do you have smart drive enabled ? If you do on post it will show the status.

If your hard drive is failing get yourself a new hd and once the new hd is up and running pop in the failing one as slave and try to pull the files you want off. I have had pretty good luck pulling info off a failing hd in the past.

[RX7-2nr]

i didnt think about the NTFS/FAT32 differences at first. i realized it afterwards, either way- the new PC should booted up ME from the old hard drive.

i need to put my corrupted hard drive in a PC with XP on it, and do scans on it and all of that, then transfer my files out.

ive been meaning to set up a mirroring RAID system (i forget if its 1 or 2) just never got serious about it. you can believe ill do it when this is resolved.

come on you guys- im dying here. help!!

[ceewi1]

You may want to download and run memtest, it could be a RAM problem.

[RX7-2nr]

Originally Posted by ceewi1

You may want to download and run memtest, it could be a RAM problem.

you nailed it.

i turned off the quick POST last night and watched it run the tests. it failed the memory test. i took out one of my chips, and it passed it.

now it will load windows, but somthing is wrong with it. it comes up in extremely low resolution, and i cant get right click or get to the control panel to change it. i cant even see the start bar. keyboard commands dont work either. i dont know if when the RAM fried- it messed up some of the system files or somthing. i dont really know.

my hard drive is working though. all my 3DS max stuff is still there. its just got problems with windows. i dont really know how im going to fix it yet, but the problem was the RAM. the RAM has a lifetime warranty too, so thats good.

[elmarcorulz]

the RAM has a lifetime warranty too, so thats good.

Yea RAM's good like that

Anyway, with the problem, i can only think of it as being somethign wrong with windows, which would mean format to be the best option. I know you have things on your hard drive you want to keep, so take the hard drive out of the main computer and put it as slave in the computer with ME on. Boot to ME like you would normally, then backup your files. Take the hard drive back to the main computer and re-install windows. Then once its done and confirmed to be working again, put it back into the ME computer as a slave and copy everything back. And hopefully, it should be working fine

TIP: When backing up, spend a good 20 minutes going over everything on the hard drive to see if it you want it backing up or not. Forgetting even 1 thing can be so fustrating when you realise.

[Praetor]

i put it in my new machine as the master

Taking a boot drive from one drive to another as it's masterwill prolly need to do something (i.e. reinstall OS) with that drive/machine

the new PC should booted up ME from the old hard drive.

Assuming the boot order goes to the a specific driver rather than a position (which, for the record, is rare)

When backing up, spend a good 20 minutes going over everything on the hard drive to see if it you want it backing up or not. Forgetting even 1 thing can be so fustrating when you realise.

Hehe yay for drive imaging

[RX7-2nr]

i fixed it. i put in my XP pro cd and reinstalled it. it works fine now except that i need to reinstall some drivers.

im still going to be setting up the mirroring RAID system though-ASAP

thanks for the replies

[Praetor]

im still going to be setting up the mirroring RAID system though-ASAP

Just so you know ... in order to maintain that ... you'll need to buy 2x as many HDD as you need space. If that sounds expensive (it should), you might consider RAID5 which, in the long run requires X+1 drives