In the last week, my internet pc has crashed 3 times. The first time, inserting the Windows CD and hitting the repair option was enough to repair it. Second time, it went right through the repair process. This time, however, during the repair process, it asks me for various files for the motherboard (like nvidia files) but then I get a message warning me that Microsoft doesn't trust the driver, certificates, etc. And then the computer freezes, before I get a chance to answer yes or no. I have no choice but to close down the pc.

Then I reboot and the computer decides to continue with the installation. This time, when asked to install the rogue file, and in order to get past the freezing problem, I opted to cancel that installation. However, the computer freezes yet again.

I'm reinstalling Windows XP on an AMD machine that's heading on to 4 years old, with an ASUS A8N32SLI Deluxe motherboard, 7800GT graphics card, 2GB DDR RAM (had 2 bad batches of Corsair RAM initially!) ... 2x 500GB WD hard drives. I know not to install SP3 onto this machine, because of the problems with it being an AMD machine and the motherboard also caused it to glitch seriously when SP3 first came out.

Any idea what my problem might be and a solution please?

Any reason not to run a Clean Install?

Purely to avoid spending hours doing that and reinstalling everything else and to see if I can save all the stuff I haven't backed up recently.

You can slave the drive in another computer in order to extract data.

If a Repair Install is not loading files it is either beyond Repair or else a hardware malfunction.

To test the latter you can try to run a Linux Live CD such as Ubuntu.

Ubuntu Home Page | Ubuntu

If Ubuntu won't run you most likely have a hardware failure and most likely the motherboard.

However if it will load up then I'd suggest slaving your drive to extract data then do a Clean Install.

Thanks for the info! I'll have a go at this on Monday, at least now I can take this one step at a time. I'll let you know how I go ... it may take me some time, being a bit of a Luddite.

No problem. We will be here.

Well, firstly this post is really supposed to be about my "internet" computer, but I'm actually going kinda backwards here, as my "graphics' computer went into a coma for a while there. (The whole idea of 2 pcs is I didn't wanna throw out an "old" pc and I didn't want my graphics machine to be burdened by anti-virus hugging software!!)

Anyway, I installed and had been happily using an encryption program called Cryptainer. That was fine, it was great for putting my private stuff on offshore external HDDs. However, I eventually noticed that defragging this computer gave me a problem with fragmented files. I have a 1TB HDD that's mirrored, which means that I'm basically stuffing up TWO HDDs. So, I transferred the Cryptainer folders to my third HDD, which I started using as a scratch disk for Photoshop, with the full intention of using the 1TB thing for other purposes. So far, so good. I deleted the "fragmented" files of Cryptainer (about 500GB in size) from my main C:/ drive and installed it onto my 3rd HDD.

However, things started playing up after a while and kept getting messages that "Windows has detected a problem and has shut down to protect your computer". The problem turned out to be the last HDD I added (post-build).

After all of that .... my question is, how can I test this HDD? The problem is that if I try to connect it and then boot, I get an error message: "Disk boot failure, insert system disk and press enter." Well, that's a step better than shutting down, but I've tried my best to get Windows to boot from the "C:/" drive. (Mirror is D, extra drive is E.)

Getting desperate, and really wondering if I've stuffed up my new HDD, I tried adding it online in a plugnplay way. Not good. I now reckon it's stuffed, and while the data on there is already backed up, I'm just wondering if any of you guys can advise me on how to see if this HDD is still functional, other than taking it to a store and paying $$ for this. Muchos thanks for your help.

My final query is will this have any relevance to testing the HDD from my other pc on this one?? ... and, I raise my glass to you guys in an anticipation of an answer.

OK, maybe I should try Ubuntu for THIS HDD as well, eh?! Thanks, jephree!!

You could try going to the drive manufacturers web site and downloading their drive utility program. It will be a .iso image that you use to create a bootable CD from.

Boot it and test the drive, see what it finds.

Yeah, I'm just trying to determine what model of WD Caviar Black I have. I've used the WD program on my older pc and it worked fine.

However, every time I try to reconnect this other drive, Windows shuts down to prevent damage. I'm wondering if it was because I put aside and formatted about 100GB of the drive (NTFS) to create a "hidden" folder for Cryptainer. When I realised it was causing the defrag problems, I managed to get rid of it from my main HDD, but for some reason, it seems that this has caused a problem on my E:/ drive.

So, when I manage to determine the exact model of HDD, I'm in the situation of NOT being able to test the E:/ drive, as it only caused Windows to shut down. I'm guessing this must mean that the drive is stuffed ... but I'd love to hear from one of you guys to tell me some different trick to be able to connect it just long enough to test it?!

Western Digital Diagnostic for DOS requires no Windows. It is a boot disk ISO.

Hence Windows is not an issue as it is not in the equation.

Simply boot the WD ISO diagnostic in order to test the drives mechanical integrity.

WD Support > Downloads > SATA & SAS > WD Caviar Black