Please Help! Got a problem!

[joejowers]

Hi,

I earlier installed a v cheap TV card into my PC and it worked fine for about half an hour. I then rebooted my PC and after the windows XP startup up screen the screen went blank and nothing happened.
I have tried loads of things and ended up reinstalling windows.
I have 2 hard drives, a 120gb maxtor that i use for windows and applications,
and a 300gb seagate barracuda SATA that i use for all music files photos etc..
Windows installed ok and i got as far as installing the software for the SATA drive and then the same problem is happening again.
The computer boots ok when i disconnect the sata drive from the motherboard.
I have tried running the seagate utilities and still have no joy.
Is this a sign of hard drive failure? When booting through the bios it says the drive is detected.
If anyone could give me any advice it would be most appreciated, I am very worried that i have lost a lot of stuff!
Thanks

 

[Buy-it PC]

Hi,

I earlier installed a v cheap TV card into my PC and it worked fine for about half an hour. I then rebooted my PC and after the windows XP startup up screen the screen went blank and nothing happened.
I have tried loads of things and ended up reinstalling windows.
I have 2 hard drives, a 120gb maxtor that i use for windows and applications,
and a 300gb seagate barracuda SATA that i use for all music files photos etc..
Windows installed ok and i got as far as installing the software for the SATA drive and then the same problem is happening again.
The computer boots ok when i disconnect the sata drive from the motherboard.
I have tried running the seagate utilities and still have no joy.
Is this a sign of hard drive failure? When booting through the bios it says the drive is detected.
If anyone could give me any advice it would be most appreciated, I am very worried that i have lost a lot of stuff!
Thanks

Joe-

First off, what you stated above...

I have 2 hard drives, a 120gb maxtor that i use for windows and applications,
and a 300gb seagate barracuda SATA that i use for all music files photos etc..
Windows installed ok and i got as far as installing the software for the SATA drive and then the same problem is happening again.

If the 120 is IDE, and the SATA is a 300gb, chances are there might be something wrong in the way the drivers are looking at the hdd.

The only thing I can consider at this point, being that you have data on that drive, is to find a USB enclosure for SATA and try to hook it up that way and see if the drive crashes. IF it doesn't, (troubleshooting here) then we know that some software driver for the S-ATA drive is not probably working on the mother board.

However, if the drive, (as an example - mind you) was the primarily drive, and you were installing windows unto it, and you couldn't get it to launch from the boot perspective... then you would know right off that there is something incompatible between the drive and the motherboard.

Being that there is data on the drive... you can't chance the issue of losing it... try an enclosure. If you can not find one, let me know.