Dodgy Hard Drive?

jackdw · #1 August 21st, 2006, 09:49 PM

I've just picked up a computer from a friend. I think it's hard drive issues.
In it's own computer:
Boots to XP loading screen, then bluescreens for a hald a second (to quickly to even read one word) and re-boots. Then does the same over and over again.

I have a spare computer in which I put his hard drive in as a slave:
Exactly the same happened even though it was a slave and had my own XP hard drive as a master.

However, if I put in a spare XP hard drive into his computer, it still blue screens, without the origional hard drive even plugged in.

The hard drive is a Samsung SP0411N. 40GB IDE as found here

Any ideas? The hard drive's expected life span is 5 years. It's 5 or 6 years old now...

Thanks in advance
-Jack

kowxisle · #2 August 21st, 2006, 10:44 PM

It might be a bad drive... but does your friends drive work? Because that's a software error completely not related to hardware that he's getting.

This: http://www.techspot.com/vb/topic7746.html might fix his problem, that is... provided the blue-screen sais something about autochk.exe

jackdw · #3 August 21st, 2006, 11:00 PM

The drive sounds normal enough, however when I put my ear right up to it, the loading clicks of the heads are very quiet.

The blue screen states ntfs.sys with a STOP: 000000x24 error

Re-installing windows is not a problem, it's just he has some files that need saving.

kowxisle · #4 August 21st, 2006, 11:25 PM

Can he run it in Safe mode? Tap F8 while booting, and select "Run in safe mode". You should be able to back files up to a floppy or a cd from there.

jackdw · #5 August 21st, 2006, 11:31 PM

No, safe mode doesn't work. It loads over a screen load of drivers in the big DOS list, then flickers a blue screen and reboots..
I'm stumped.

kowxisle · #6 August 21st, 2006, 11:59 PM

Quote:

The hard drive's expected life span is 5 years. It's 5 or 6 years old now...

I didn't read that last time. I think it's the drive.

cHiNgY1788 · #7 August 22nd, 2006, 12:06 AM

download a free program "SeaTools" from the seagate website
www.seagate.com
extract to a floppy
boot to the floppy
and run the diagnosis tests
there will tell you if it is a controller (motherboard), hard drive or partition (software) problem

jackdw · #8 August 22nd, 2006, 01:55 AM

Ah, sounds just what I need. I'll give it a try tomorrow and let you know how I get on.

Thanks for your help everyone.

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