Regular Crashes. [Non-GW related]

Hey.

So yeah, my PC keeps dying, but it's not un-expected, when it's about to die, i hear a clunk of some sort in my HDD tower, which i suspect is one of the Hard Drives switiching off or breaking or something.

I let it run on a loop for a while (as it wouldn't boot) and i eventually got something about my Hardware configuration is bad or whatever.

Now i've formatted my C Drive (with ONLY my OS/Drivers on) over 5 times the past few days. It works fine for a few hours after Format then dies.

Now my second Hard Drive, which has games/Documents on etc, is a 250GB pure storage unit.

I got the message "KERNEL_STACK_INPAGE_ERROR" every time i crash, which i'm aware is something to do with the boot sector? So i formatted to cure this, though my knowledge is rather slim of that level of computing.

So i tried to focus on where the problem was, so i d/c'ed my 250GB HDD, and it booted. I then restarted and connected it, and it booted again. It's still running at the moment, (thankfully).

So my question is, could i have the above error on a drive with no OS on it? My PC is coming up 3 years old now, par the 250GB which is only a few months old. So i'm aware the specs aren't amazing/stuff may need replacing.

I'm going to copy everything to my C, format the 250GB and then copy stuff back, see if it helps.

So advice/solutions is really what i'm after.

Thanks, and sorry for the rather long-winded post.

It sounds like an HDD failure to me, they ''click'' or ''sweep'' when they die sometimes.

My old 30gb storage drive did this, you would hear it start sweeping, like a ton of clicking sounds, then like 10 seconds later a full system lock came. I removed that second hard drive and never had lockups again, you should run scans on your drives and check them to see if they are bad.

I don't know what the Kernel Stack error means though, unfortunately I am not that knowledgeable in that area. By the way, you mentioned you got something about your hardware configuration gone bad - was this by any chance the S.M.A.R.T scan?

Hm, well i'm still copying things over. When they're done i'll attempt to Format the big one. Thing is i can't really remove it as it's the biggest one i have atm. I guess i could try send it back if things dont improve.

What do you suggest to scan them with?

Thanks for the speedy reply.

EDIT++

I don't know what a S.M.A.R.T scan is, sorry, it just tried to boot a few times then came up a black screen with the message, and reffered me to the windows manual.

Unfortunately I don't have any programs to recommend right now, I only know of the built in Windows one.

Just, if you can, try to find out which of the drives is clicking - it will undoubtedly be the culprit drive.

Well it's clicked a few times just now, and nothing happened, but they're sat one above the other, so finding one would be hard, i could unscrew them and hold each of them and see what happens.

Hmm, maybe try that.

I found these two things on Wikipedia; Head Crash http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Head_crash

And Click of Death: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Click_of_death

I also found this on your error: KERNEL_STACK_INPAGE_ERROR - This Stop message indicates that the requested page of kernel data from the paging file could not be read into memory. It might have been caused by a bad block (sector) in a paging file, a disk controller error, a defective motherboard, failing RAM, or because the stack signature in the kernel stack was not found. In extremely rare cases, it is caused when nonpaged pool resources run out.

Well, having read both of those, i don't think a format will cure it. It says "Due to physical abuse" which is hasn't been subjected to, or manufacturing error.

I got it from eBuyer, so doubt i could send it back, on the other hand it was only £30, i could just buy another i guess. I'll try a format, but if it's been damaged internally i can only really buy another.

Any suggestions on fairly cheap , 250-500GB drives?

My current two are Maxtor.

Hm, thanks for looking into the error message, i guess it means a new PC then. Guess i'll have to do without the storage for a while.

Well, I think we should wait for the others to post here, they may know fixes to this, potentially. Since I don't know the exact problem with your drive(s) and other parts, I can't really say for certain. Though the hard drive clicking leads to some obvious assumptions.

I'd say buy Western Digital or Seagate hard drives, they seem to make the most decent ones, though I do own a couple of Maxtor's which work fine - but I got them free, if I had to choose I'd get WD or Seagate. My computer currently runs on two of these: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16822148140 I love them.

Here's some articles on that error by the way:

* http://support.microsoft.com/kb/228753

* http://www.microsoft.com/technet/pro....mspx?mfr=true

* http://support.microsoft.com/kb/315266

Maybe some of those will help explain, I'm going to read them now.

Hmm, after further reading I am inclined to say that the drive is just dying.

You don't have to take hdd out to check which one is clicking - just pull cables out of one hdd.

Well. i formatted the 250GB one, and i'm moving stuff back over to it now.

As for WD, I had regular crashes when i used my current C drive as storage, and my WD as my OS drive, so i thought my WD was faulty. Now i'm inclined to say my Maxtor is broken. Sigh.

Perhaps if i removed the Maxtor and used my old WD as an OS drive instead?

Thanks again for the help.

Hmm yeah, I'm not even sure. I think that one bad drive can simply screw up the whole deal, kind of like ''one bad seed ruins the whole apple''.

In my experience only, though. As I mentioned before, when I had one drive fail the whole system would freeze - despite that my OS wasn't even on that drive. Removing it stopped the freezes, so I guess that was the case.

I was using two IDE drives in that computer, at the moment I am using SATA drives, do you have SATA? You're welcome by the way.

Darn, I actually knew what the error meant, but Brianna beat me to it. Now I don't get to sound smart...

ANYWAY. Yes, it does sound like the drive is dying on you. Even if you move everything off the drive, and leave it connected, it may still cause problems. Have you tried switching the position of the physical drives themselves? As in pulling the connectors from the back of one and putting them in the other one?

I'd suggest moving the boot partition (the OS) off the bad drive and putting it on the new one. A fresh install is the best way to do this. Leave out the bad drive all together, disconnect it even. Switch the drives in the drives bays as well, as I mentioned earlier. Once you're stable on the "good" HDD, you can reattach the "bad" drive and see if it gives you the same error as before. If it still gives you the error, I'd just throw the whole thing out the window.

Not really, but you know what I mean.

Well, i'm on SATA atm.

As for the drives, i formatted the 250Gb as i said and i've had no Clicks of Death as of yet. However, the big one is sat ABOVE my OS, so should i just swap the cables around?

Also, for knowing Katsumi, you get a cookie. If it continues failing, i'll just buy a new PC as i planned to, but leave both these drives out of it.

Oh, and slightly off-topic, i won't be able to get SP2 anymore as SP3 is out, so do you reccomend finding SP2 elsewhere, or just downloading SP3. (I'm on XP pro)

Thanks.

Since they're SATA, I don't think it should make a big a deal as if they were IDE. I don't know that the master/slave thing should be a problem - that's what I was thinking of.

You can try switching the cables and see if that does anything. With SATA, I doubt it will, since they're supposed to be hot-swappable.

Downloading SP3 will have everything SP2 had and more, so you can download that no problem.

Yea for cookies!

Ah fair enough. SP3 is still early though so it'll be buggy as hell. I found an SP 2 link yay.

Nothing's blown up as of yet, but if it does i'll come bac and whine some more.

Thanks a lot for the help guys.

No problem, Berek. Hopefully SP2 will keep everything fixed.

I've also been using SP3 for a couple of weeks now, and I haven't experienced any problems.

Same here, I've used it since about a week after release, with no problems. The only stuff I've even heard of going wrong with xpsp3 was with HP machines and some dumb HP driver, and that all versions of Acrobat Reader suck at printing (takes forever) on xpsp3. So if neither of those situations would apply to you, Berek, install away.