wierd hard drive problem

Has anybody seen this.

I had a 250 gig segate barracuda 3.0 SATA drive that I was loading XP pro on initially. (the rest of my equipment is in my sig)

Anyhow I install XP pro onto the drive, the only problem being that the computer froze up during the install one time but a quick restart and all was good.

So I get XP installed get some of the drivers installed and then go to update SP2. this is where it gets wierd. I could not install it. I got a strange error which I cannot remember something along the lines of "cannot verify ....yada yada." Anyhow, I google the error and it has somehting to do with the cryptographic service so I try the fix and it doesn't work. So at this point, I try to reinstall XP.

Upon trying to install XP again I got a black screen that says "windows is inspecting your hardware". From there the screen should turn blue and drivers should start being loaded to the drive. Well, this didn't happen the screen stayed black and nothing happened. I try a different SATA cable ...nothing. switch SATA ports...nothing. Finally, I try to install windows on my 1.5 gig 320 WD hDD and it works. SO I chalked it up as a bad drive and sent it on its way.

So now I am wondering if there is something else that could of caused this other than a bad drive?

thanks

Usually when encountering issues during installation, it can be narrowed to one of three general areas:

1. Media source. If the CD/DVD disc is not in good condition, files can be copied in a corrupted state. You can include the drive itself in this category too. If the device reading the material has issues, you will have corrupted install files. The cables and device controllers (IDE/SATA) can be included here as both can lead to corrupted installations.

2. Target media. As most probable in your case, if your hard drive is going south, your install files may transfer correctly, but end up corrupted due to bad disks. Count your cables and controllers here too.

3. Memory. Most everything will be cached at some point, so if you have bad RAM, your install files can become corrupted while in cache storage. Memory controllers and even the CPU can be thrown in here for kicks.

Of course there are many other things that can cause you to experience what has happened, I'd have to say those are the most common reasons for this situation.

If it worked fine on one drive and not another, its more than likely that the drive had problems.

CGR said:

If it worked fine on one drive and not another, its more than likely that the drive had problems.

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Yep that was pretty much what I thought but just wanted to make sure. It was strange how it wouldn't let me DL SP2 nor reinstall windows but would let me reformat it from the disk manager in windows(that is once i installed XP on the other drive.)

Installing an OS on an overclocked system isnt a very good idea either, so if your setup is oc'd, go back to stock before doing so. Its a good bet that the drive is just bad though, as said before.

Diddyu said:

Installing an OS on an overclocked system isnt a very good idea either, so if your setup is oc'd, go back to stock before doing so. Its a good bet that the drive is just bad though, as said before.

Click to expand...

Nope noT OCed yet, haven't had a chance to even tinker with that due to all the issues I have been running into. Hopefully the new HDD fixes this problem.