today, my computer simply just froze and restarted itself in about 30 seconds and booted up fine. it did it again but i manually turned it on and off, but when it started up it (not in bios either) didnt find the hard drive. i turned the computer off for a bit, checked the wires and turned it on and it loaded fine. a program called active SMART says everything is OK. but for awhile now its been loading slower and my game has been running slower..after i buy a new case with 6 fans and a new heatsink.

What is your Operating System? Did you change anything other than the case?

If you changed motherboards you would need to reinstall XP if that is your OS.

If you know the manufacturer of your hard drive you will find their diagnostic utilities here:



You will find the major brand diagnostics listed here:

http://www.tacktech.com/display.cfm?ttid=287

With a few others listed here:

http://www.ultimatebootcd.com/

windows XP home. its a maxtor 6Y120M0 SATA hard drive. mobo hasnt changed. i've had the drive for about 2-3 years.

i have maxblast 1.00 diskette, i guess i should upgrade it heh.

I think i have a virus now. i did a check disc when the system was restarting, then it says there was a error loading the system and to select either "last known good configuration" or "start normally" and other options..i picked last known and it took forever to load and it says user32.dll is missing. and also the floppy isnt working.

Smee03,

This isn't necessarily a virus. What has happened is that Windows has detected that it failed to load properly and so, the next time that you booted the PC, it has given you the option to carry on loading normally or go into Safe Mode or to use the Last Known Good Configuration (LKGC). The idea of the LKGC is that, if you install a new piece of hardware or software and the system then won't boot up after that, you can run it using the system files that you had before you installed the hardware or software that caused the problem. Unfortunately, in your case, it doesn't appear to have saved the LKGC properly.

If you can still get into Windows, try going to the Start Menu > Run prompt and then type in SFC /SCANNOW and click OK. This will run the System File Checker utility to scan your system files for missing or invalid files such as User32.DLL. When it comes across a file that needs to be restored back to the original version, it may prompt you to insert your Windows CD. Once System File Checker has completed, reboot the PC to check that it boots up correctly. Once the PC has rebooted successfully, run Windows Update to re-install any updated system files that System File Checker had replaced with older versions.

The Maxtor diagnostic tool is PowerMax

http://www.maxtor.com/portal/site/Ma...&downloadID=22

it won't load into safe mode or any other mode. i tried to repair windows not by recovery console, but by after selecting installing, and it said it couldnt create a windows folder "usmi" or somthing with four letters, i cant remember.