Faulty hard drive?
 

Was wondering if anyone could help me on this computer problem ive had for a bit. I bought a maxtor 120gb hard drive, i went through the format/partitioning stuff using the maxblast software. now heres the problem. when installing windows xp midway through the install progress it REBOOTS. Heres what ive tried but never worked.
1.) format / partition with maxblast
2.) format / partition with XP disk
(Ive tried creating 1 main partition and also different sized partitions using both programs.)
3.) Did a full format with maxtor software that checked for errors and added zeros or somthing to the end and beginning of the disk.

Is there any way i can fix this or should i just return it?

Did the maxtor software find any errors at all? If so, it's probably defective. If not, it's probably not. Your problem could be caused by a defective CD drive, CD-ROM (disc) or IDE cable, or it could be a problem with your memory or something.

First, are you trying to upgrade to windows XP from W2K or Win98, or trying install it from scratch?

If you are installing from scratch, then just let the install program handle the drive formatting and partitioning. You can let it install to a nice sized primary partion and then you make a sercondary partition to create logical drives later.

If you're upgrading, was the previous OS running before you tried the upgrade? More details would be good.


You should also verify that there are no chipset compatibility problems as well. Some chipsets have problems with the Windows install.

From experience, I think that the problem is either the motherboard or the cpu/chipset. I had the same experience twice. Once with an older board and the via chipset and once with a new (at the time) DFI Lanparty II and an AMD CPU. It turned out to be the motherboard in both cases.

The old board simply would not run with W2K. The Lanparty was defective.

DFI's support was good, though and I had a replacement quickly and then had no problems with the install.

Give us some more details, okay?

Its an install from scratch. There was no errors when I ran the error software thing. I doubt its the chipset because im going to use that hard drive on the computer im on now. Im using a 40gig right now on p4 system that is running xp. If anything I guess ill just ghost the drive. My friend has a pci card that can ghost drives, im not to familliar with ghosting software. any good programs to do that?

erm... Norton Ghost? I think the MaxBlast software will do it too... it did the last time (long, long ago) that I used it...

I seriously doubt that it's a software related issue. Computers don't just spontaneously reboot during an install. Installation code runs in a very predictable, "clean" environment (no other programs running, no spyware, viruses, etc.), so they theoretically should *never* crash unless there is some bad hardware.

Chances are your hard drive simply isn't getting along nicely with your hard drive controller. I'd suggest swapping out your ATA cable first. If that doesn't fix it, it could either be the motherboard (specifically the southbridge), or the controller on your new drive (however that's not likely since it's new).

It may also be power supply related - I have seen a few machines where the power supply was failing where the machine would randomly reboot...

Could be a number of things... some things to try....

Windows installations typically leave some kind of log behind that you can use to see why the install failed. Maybe something was logged to this file before it rebooted. I found this list of log files that you may check.

Also, if you system is just spontaniously rebooting, it could be because you have memory problems. You should definately run a memory test on your RAM before you go and return the drive.

On the subject of the actual problem (whoops!) I had a PC that refused to accept a build of XP. Actually, it was several PC's, all of the same make/model. I tried BIOS flashes - you name it. In the end, it turned out to be ridiculously simple. The APCI interface setting in the BIOS had caused the install routine to puke when the video mode changed... after changing the setting, the install got to the point in question, the screen mode changed and the monitor 'reset' and off she went, tickity-boo. Weird.