My computer is haunted

[AJ]

Whatsup everyone! I'm back for a hardware question, since you guys are the resident know it alls!

My pc has some weird issues. I need some of your technical expertise cuz i have NO idea where to start debugging my hardware.

There are a few bizzaro ways my computer has been messing up the past two days. The most usual way is as follows:

to go completely black to the monitor, and the monitor idle light goes off like theres no signal. I get a strange noise from inside my case, and my DVD rom drive goes BONKERS, like its whirring or something, even though theres nothng in it. I need to power the system down. This happens anywhere from boot up to about 30 minutes after my system starts up, so my system actually does run ok sometimes for short periods of time. The only clue i have towards its agressors is that when i start up a Fullscreen game, like UT, the game plays fine for like 10 seconds then dies. Otherwise its screwiness is intermittant. This would be ok if my POST codes on my mobo gave me some help. Nothing-FF only, so im clueless.

Every few times my computer boots up ok before it screws up, I get get a lil warning sign in my systray, so and so file is corrupted, run Chkdisk. So I run Chkdisk every few times, and my pc fixes about 50 errors all having to do with cross linked allocation units, and first allocation unit not being valid. Its fixed ok til about 3 more boot ups and tons more corrupt files, usually in temporary internet files. I'm pretty sure its not a virus as i scanned, but i suppose it could be, and i havent openend any attachments.

The other way my computer messes up (and the FIRST way it started goin nuts) was after a lil while of normal use, everything freezes and my screen turns a tint of red but still i can see what i was going, but its like vertical hold bars are runnin up and down my monitor. Only way to get out of this is to reboot.

Id say EVERYTHING is screwed up but this all started at the same time, and since it fails in such different ways, i'm all out of ideas. I was thinking it could be the case heating up getting everything screwy, but it still has the problem (at least when starting a game) with the case off. My hsf is pretty decent, and motherboard Monitor gives me a temp of about 51, 52...54 max once right after a failure.

Key Specs:

Built 8/01
Windows XP Professional
Athlon 1.4Ghz
Thermosonic Thermoengine
Expox 8k7a Mobo
256k crucial ddr
IBM Deskstar 60gxp 40GB
Pioneer DVDROM 16x
MSI GeForce2 Pro 64MB

Thanks in advance people!
I know thats alot of information but you guys are still the most knowledgeable and nicest help around!

[AJ]

Update: Thought it might be the cpu...I tried some high cpu usage activities, like VCDGear conversions, and watched my cpu usage go up to like 70% with no problems.

However i notice every time i crash, the "you didnt properly reboot your pc" checkdisk program during Windows XP fixes an error from the program I was just using.
for example: I was on the epox webpage when it crashed, then after crashing i see:
/temproaryInternetFiles/epox.html File allocation error trancated (i dont know exactly what it says)

But it seems corruption?
like datas getting corrupted when i use it. Very strange. Also, I narrowed the high pitched sound after the crash to around the northbridge area of my mobo. Could this be the problem? Would it cause random crashes and file data

[penguin_hash]

Format everything, re-install a clean setup and then Ghost your system Oh yeah, unplug your power cable for 10 seconds These two steps always seem to do wonders for my system.

Anyways, here are some suggestions, though I doubt it will be helpful:
1) What is your power supply? I've had my Win2K system reboot on me and do strange things during "intense" usage. This was resolved by upgrading my power supply.

2) If you're bored and have the time, you might want to uninstall/reinstall drivers and programs to see which are XP certified. This has been a strange source of problems (one of my friend's machines would always reboot upon shutdown because one of his Adaptec programs was not fully XP'd)

If you think it's strange hdd corruption, you can turn on SMART from the BIOS and run a program called Active SMART that will track your HDD death rate. If it'd were me, I'd ghost my system and then do a re-install to see if this happens and then try to narrow down the issue. It might be a hardware issue, but .. uh... you'd have to search the MS Knowledge base for that.

[attgig]

HI AJ!


Just thought I'd tell you people are missin ya in the Off Topic forums: http://www.gotapex.com/forums/showth...threadid=38583

And get to 1500 posts already~!

[attgig]

Oh, and about your problem...

Yeah, I'm thinking it's the hard drive....cause people have been complaining a LOT about that hard drive..
quick! get a backup of all your important files, before that thing fails.

But, yeah, if you're getting all those errors....
just do a quick search of these forums for the ibm drive, and you'll see a lotta complainin.

[Jenny]

Woah! AJ! Where ya been?? Missed your posts!

[sho.gun]

ugh... the IBM Deskstar GXP sticks out like a sore thumb to me. I've read many horror stories about that drive, I suggest you do what att said, ASAP.

[LPMiller]

also, monitor your CPU temps. Those thermoengines, if not installed just right, don't sit on the core correctly, which can seriously overheat the processor.