Help! Computer crashed after fresh fresh reinstall of XP

[SLX]

Hello fellow sysopt patrons!

(1) I built a computer for some people, about <1 year ago, and the thing crashed. Some how its missing the boot. After you restart it it goes into the winxp screen with the bar and after that it crashes and says to me:

(2) Unbootable_boot_volume

(3) First I tried to pop in the WINXP home cd and recover. It started out ok but after I pressed enter to setup windows it sensed the hard drive and crashed. Giving me (2)

(4) Ok, so I decided to do a clean install and every thing was wonderfull. Took me about 1 hrs to install all the drivers and then after I loaded up the dsl modem with AOL. The screen went black and then after we reboot were at step (1) again. Rinse repeat and start over :(

I took out the hard drive and held it it was pretty warm. the ventlation in this case is pretty low. Im not sure if the HD is defective or not, since the HD is not making any sounds as if it were dying. I cant narrow what is wrong, if the IDE controler is gone haywire. Or if, its a Virus on line, that did this.

Im not a pro computer builder or any thing, any help would be much appreciated. I built a computer for some family friends and they were really nice, gave me 100$ for building the system and I feel bad for this. Please help.

SYSTEM SPECS OF THE KAUPUT SYS:
350 watt psu
2.0a 400mhz bus p4
80gb maxtor d740x-6l HD
512 mb ddr ram 2700 from kingston
VIA VSPD P4pb 400
ATI 7500 64mb ddr

[Rocketmech]

You sure the error is not,
"Unmountable_boot_volume" ?

After a year I would suspect the hard drive goin bad, no fault of yours.
For starters, Clear CMOS and set the Bios defaults. Check the drives are set to Auto in the bios.
Then, run a diagnostic check on the hard drive using MaxBlaster from Maxtor.

[BipolarBill]

It's called "Powermax" now. I hate the way they keep changing names.

[SLX]

Powermax / Maxblaster hehe hehe cheesey...:) THanks for your help ill do just that.

Yea the things are on auto and the cmos it clear. same same. *sigh umm i thought maxtor was decent. I might have to put a fan in thier case to help the next one last longer.

Funny thing the hard drive in my parents computer went out 2. More work... This time its a Quantam fireball. 5 years old. :( thats like 80 in human years?

So a question, do hard drives go out this easy all the time?

[BipolarBill]

It's a crapshoot. Most last years. Some last months. They theorize that drives which are handled gently last longest. The IBM 75GXP series is an exception to that rule. :mad:

[Johnny Fist]

I've got a Maxtor 15Gb drive I've used for three years, but an IBM Deskstar that didn't lst six months.

[bob05]

Try booting up with the Windows XP CD and go to the Repair Console. Then CHKDSK it. I had that same error and for some reason CHKDSK fixed it. :t

[SLX]

Originally posted by bob05
Try booting up with the Windows XP CD and go to the Repair Console. Then CHKDSK it. I had that same error and for some reason CHKDSK fixed it. :t

Thanks for every ones help, very very much appreciated! :-@ I tried to CHKDSK it in the recover console but it does not work. Gives the BSOD the says UNMOUNTABLE_BLAH_BLAH.

I tried running maxblaster/powmax and it cant even detect the thing. Even on my own two other systems an old p3 system or and a SIS655 chipset with raid and regular IDE.

At least MAXTOR gives a nice warranty on thier drives. IT expires 2005. Cars arnt even warranted that long. After those 3 years I guess who knows what can happen.

I heard that some companies offer 5 year warranties. I might switch to these for any other builds for strangers. :)

[SLX]

Oh yes got it fixed, thanks for every ones time! Looks like I get my fair share of bad hard drives. I bought 2 40 gig 7.2k rpm Seagates to fix 2 computers and 1 of them was bad :( rma back to newegg at my expense. Funny one of them was made in Singapore and one was made in China.

Also I have another question. I did a reinstall and what is with windows XP making f: the default drive?? On another computer I have d: as the default drive. What can I do to change this? So far I have a Zip drive that thinks it’s a C: drive. **** computer has a identity problem.

[BipolarBill]

The Zip drive should always be a slave to another drive. That solves a lot of issues.

There's nothing that can be done to change the drive letter. If it bothers you, reinstall and make sure that HDD-0 is set in the srive sequence before all but floppy and CD.