The drive or a lack of power

[svol]

I'm reparing a computer for somebody where the IDE drive has some weird problems.
If you make a fresh install win Win98 after a couple of days the system gets unstable and Windows gives a blue screen that it can't write to C: (which is the HD) anymore and you have to restart the PC. Then scandisk pops up and starts scanning for bad sectors and hangs at 16% you only hear some noice from the drive once a minute. If your shutdown scandisk the computer won't boot any further.
I think it a lack of power (he only has a 250 W PSU with a AMD 1,1 GHz comp with 2 CDROMs and several PCI cards), but could it also be the drive which is bad, it's a Quantum Fireball Plus AS.

After formatting the disk the comp runs fine for about a week but then scandisk starts detecting harddisk problems, but if I scan with Norton Diskdoctor it don't find any bad sectors.

My case has so many fans that it hovers above the ground .

 

[Lars_Coleman]

I would go to Maxtor's website and download the Powermax to test the drive. If it passes I would run the "Write Disk Pack (Low Level Format)" and make sure that goes through. After that is done make sure you are using an 80wire 40pin Ultra cable. Usually you can tell those apart from the others because they have a blue, grey, and black connection.

Other then that the PSU in the system is small but it should work fine. If you think thats the problem a 300-350watt enermax would set you back about $60US.

<font color=red>I aM WE ToDD DiD.</font color=red><font color=white> I aM </font color=white><font color=blue>SOfA KING WE ToDD DiD</font color=blue>

 

[pike]

If you suspect to much power drain perhaps you could do a test. Maybe disconnect the 2 CD-ROMs and run some continuous prog on the pc and see what happends.
Did the Win 98 install go perfactly. Perhaps the Win cd is damaged. No Norton Windoctor errors(i have this myself and have doughts as to the effectiveness of this app) however.
Good luck
How is the cross country skiing at this time of year

Danny

No Barbie Dolls under the tree this Xmass! :frown:

 

[svol]

I already tried with a different Windows 98 version, still after a couple of days weird errors appear, and the comp hangs suddenly. No IRQ conflicts and I used the latest drivers. It could also be some overheating isue, but the temps seem ok.
And what about skiing, there doesn't is snow in Netherland.

My case has so many fans that it hovers above the ground .