My system crashed for the fourth time. HELP

[kumar6]

Hello all,

Let me tell you that this system with Maxtor 160 GB ultra ATA bought it last thanksgiving. I had installed windows home, later upgraded it to win pro....was working fine for 6 months. Suddenly one day,it didnt even boot to windows screen, but the bios recognised it( i presumed due to voltage fluctaation, the files got corrupted)....later on to make a long story short...i proceeded to format the partiton containing windows (C. I installed windows XP pro succesively for 3 times..
This is what happens with ever installation. I load other essential softwares like my drivers for printer, norton antivirus, office, yahoo messenger and nero to be precise....thats it. After a day of installation, suddenly when i click to open any program..it says the file is not readable...i also noticed that it asked me to run chkdsk.
well it runs by itself chkdsk...and starts deleting a whole set of files and restores the same....
after it boots to the windows...i notice that many programs follow the same....finally windows crashes.
My question is....Is my harddisk at fault or is my OS corrupted?
Please help I have been wasting my time just sitting in front of the blue screen.
Secondly, can you guys recommend image software...is Acronis better or Norton Ghost?

Thanks a bunch in advance

 

[mattjurado]

Haven't used Acronis much, Ghost has been nice for years. Anyways, it really sounds like a disk failure is coming, rather than a damaged file system. Windows is pretty good at recording disk errors in the system event log in your event viewer (control panel>administrative tools). If they are there, replace the disk, hopefully you can RMA it to Maxtor. If there are no disk errors, format and reload. Don't load anything but drivers, run it for a couple of days, and see how it goes. Good luck!

Matt J.

Please always take the time to backup any and all data before performing any actions suggested for ANY problem, regardless of how minor a change it might seem. Also test the backup to make sure it is intact.

 

[linney]

Maxtor should have free diagnostic software on their site which will soon tell you the condition of their hard drive.

 

[kumar6]

Used chkdsk....says no bad sectors...do u mean hard drive is good?

 

[micker377]

If it ran long enough to run chkdisk, it worked OK that time. Your problem could also indicate a bad IDE cable, bad power (or IDE) connection on the hard drive, or even intermittant power supply.

 

[SimonDavies]

Have a look at the disk management and see if it's showing anything there.

I would also have a look around for some 3rd party apps to check the disk.

I have a small 210mb\8cm cd I carry that's full of usefull applications for just that reason.

I would also see about running chkdsk /F /R to see if it finds any bad sectors and see about fixing any problems.