HDD Killers

BSOD’s!

Posted on Sunday 6 November 2005

For those of you that don’t know, BSOD stands for Blue Screen Of Death, in Windows 95/98/ME they were fairly common, however if you get one in XP then you know that something has seriously fucked up. I mentioned in “A Loss To Be Mourned” that I was getting BSOD’s all the time and that I suspected it was because I’d put a new motherboard and CPU in and Windows didn’t like it. Turns out I was wrong.

I came to my PC one morning and it had blue screened again, however when I restarted it didn’t load Windows, it just blue screened again and restarted. No matter what I did it kept doing that. So I had to reinstall Windows. To my horror I still kept getting the blue screens, but now I know why.

A tell-tale sound emanating from inside my PC gave it away. It sounded like an actuator arm on a hard drive was spazzing out (for lack of a better term). I had a feeling I knew which one. Inside my PC there are 3 hard drives, an 80GB (brand new), a 160GB (9-10 months old) and a 120GB (2-3 years old). With the 120GB HDD though, there’s a couple of things wrong with it. The 4 pin power connector generally requires 4 connectors on the HDD, but the 120GB HDD has only 3. So instead of; 12V, ground, ground, 5V, it actually has; 12V, ground, gap, 5V. Also, instead of there being all 39pins for the ATA connector, it has a mere 37, because two broke off.

However, even with these deficiancies it was working rather well, until very recently anyway, so it appears that it’s on it’s last legs. Therefore I have unplugged the HDD until I have somewhere to put all of the films on it. Since unplugging it I have not had a single BSOD, and I hope it continues this way.


  1.  
    Antony
    Sunday 6th November 2005 | 8:26 pm
     
    Antony's Globally Recognised Avatar

    Ah, the oh-so-not-nice BSOD, i had one of them yesterday – which was kinda annoying as i was mid-game.
    To be honest though david, you have known that the 120gb Drive in question has kinda been a little faulty for some time – as indicated by the fact that at one point if it was actually fiited into the case it would just decided not to work.
    As for somewhere to put the films….perhaps you should get your server with almost 2Tb of storage space up and running….just a sugestion!

  2.  
    Sunday 6th November 2005 | 10:44 pm
     
    Zach Blume's Globally Recognised Avatar

    Once the Command Prompt on my computer stopped working. I swear you could’ve heard my shout of “Oh shiitttt” from a mile away. In the next week the only thing I could do to make the computer work is manually shut down explorer.exe–not a good sign lol. I finally fixed it, though. Yay for system restore! Microsoft just won a few points in my book (no, they didn’t fuck up the computer in the first place–I’m always fucking around with my computer. What can I saw, I’m a programmer.)

  3.  
    Sunday 6th November 2005 | 10:46 pm
     
    Zach Blume's Globally Recognised Avatar

    “Ah, the oh-so-not-nice BSOD, i had one of them yesterday – which was kinda annoying as i was mid-game.”

    Usually thats graphic or audio-driver related. Enter the Matrix kept crashing my computer at the exact same point, and I had a Nividia GeForce 4, so I didn’t know what the problem was. It turned out to be some audio driver. I fixed it in less than five minutes after that.

  4.  
    Monday 7th November 2005 | 3:42 am
     
    Daniel's Globally Recognised Avatar

    Lol, I’m surprised it actually worked with all those defects up until now…

    I’ve only seen 1 BSOD on WinXP, and it was caused by a faulty printer driver I tried to install… it seemed to be able to load into safemode, though, so it wasn’t a problem for long.

  5.  
    Monday 7th November 2005 | 5:05 am
     
    David's Globally Recognised Avatar

    I plan to get the server working on Wednesday, more accurately, I plan to get someone to get the server working on Wednesday. The computer society is running a Linux Install Awareness Day (LIAD), and I have kindly donated the use of my PC to the society for the afternoon. Aren’t I fantastic?

    Basically, they can do what they like with it, so long as at the end I have a working Linux install, my RAID card drivers are installed and Samba server works. From there I’m pretty sure I’ll be able to handle the other stuff (like installing VNC) by myself.

    Enter The Matrix is like … the worst game ever by the way.

    Also it’s nVidia, not Nividia.

  6.  
    Monday 7th November 2005 | 5:19 am
     
    Daniel's Globally Recognised Avatar

    How about you just… attend this LIAD thing?

    And yeah, my brother bought Enter the Matrix a while ago for $20 and he near-beat it, but I couldn’t be motivated to continue any further than the first stage/level/whatever.

  7.  
    Antony
    Monday 7th November 2005 | 11:48 am
     
    Antony's Globally Recognised Avatar

    Nah, the nice BSOD was thanks to the drivers of the amazingly shite Modem that AOL supply with their Broadband package (BT Voyager 105) its constantly fucking up, but im to stingy to buy a new one cus i should only be with AOL till January then its shop around for new provider time.
    I second the fact that Enter The Matrix is one of the all-time worst games ever, which is a shame as the films are so damn good.
    Nice plan there david, such a kind gesture to donate your PC like that….what a nice person you arn’t.

  8.  
    Monday 7th November 2005 | 5:14 pm
     
    David's Globally Recognised Avatar

    Meh, they know they’re getting used, but they’re getting a PC out of it for the afternoon. It’s a win-win situation.

    It’s not manipulation if they know they”re being manipulated…

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