HDD going bad?

[SXRguyinMA]

Ok I was in the basement trying to get some work done on Tempest, and started having issues with the XP rig I've got setup down there. I kept getting random BSODs, all saying either "IRQL NOT LESS THAN OR EQUAL TO" or "DRIVER IRQL NOT LESS THAN OR EQUAL TO" or something to that effect. After MANY restarts, disk checks, etc, it got the the point where XP wouldn't even boot. No biggie, I'll just reinstall XP I thought. Nope. Got halfway through the install and it froze, then gave me the BSOD again. I wiped and repartitioned and reformatted the drive. I tried different video cards, etc, and nothing worked. Could it be the HDD just going bad? :?

[artoodeeto]

shoot....I've had that error before, and I *want* to say it was the RAM. Not completely sure, but if you have extra RAM sitting around that you can throw in, give it a shot. Otherwise, yeah it's probably the hard drive. :(

*edit - did a little research, and the general consensus seems to be that it's RAM that's the most likely culprit:
http://www.technibble.com/how-to-diagnose-bad-ram/

**further edit - when my first SSD drive started to die, the computer would just freeze. no errors or anything, it just froze. it eventually stopped booting and I couldn't reinstall windows...my guess is that's how a normal hard drive dying would look too.

[SXRguyinMA]

nah no extra ram unfortunately. I wish I had a spare HDD I could toss in and try though

[x88x]

Whenever I see 'IRQL NOT LESS OR EQUAL', my first thought is always RAM. Try running memtest86 on it, see what it tells you.

[SXRguyinMA]

can't, won't boot into windows and won't do a fresh install either lol

[x88x]

Doesn't matter.

memtest86 : live-boot RAM testing tool:
http://www.memtest86.com/

[Technochicken]

Most likely all your sticks of ram will not be bad, so you can just try booting up on one, and if that does not work try another.

[nevermind1534]

Check the voltages that your PSU is putting out. Hard drives can also be very sensitive to high voltages. When my problem with installing xp is the hard drive, it usually (make that always, from my experience) won't copy during the initial installation stage after you boot from the CD.

[SXRguyinMA]

alright I'm going to download memtest tonight and give it a shot, if it comes up ok then I'll start looking at the voltages. I also +repped everyone for their help! :D

I was almost thinking it wasn't the drive, as it wasn't making any abnormal noises. A few times though, after a BSOD reboot, the first screen would come up and it would freeze on "detecting IDE drives." Another hard reboot and it'd blow through it like normal :?

[knowledgegranted]

I googled around and looked for things similar to your claims and couldn't find anything really. Is the drive within warranty?


I've come to the stunning conclusion, that if google dosen't work...the sledgehammer does.

[SXRguyinMA]

no this drive is WELL out of warranty lol. I'm going to run memtest tonight and see what happens :D

[SXRguyinMA]

ok so it turns out that I had my memory overclocked a tad. I undid it and everything's peachy :D Did a fresh XP install, and typing from it right now while I'm downloading updates and SP3 and all that crap lol

[artoodeeto]

awesome! I wish error messages could be more descriptive, especially in situations like this: "You fiddled with your RAM too much you dope, go back and fix it and I'll work again." :P

[msmrx57]

awesome! I wish error messages could be more descriptive, especially in situations like this: "You fiddled with your RAM too much you dope, go back and fix it and I'll work again." :P

LOL. But then what would tech support do? :think:

[SXRguyinMA]

LOL. But then what would tech support do? :think:

touche :D

[diluzio91]

LOL. But then what would tech support do? :think:

There will always be a customer who is to full of himself to think that a mere computer could tell him that he is wrong... So he will call and b*tch for 45 min about how it dosn't work... lol... thats what we would do