hard disk failing? or is hard disk controller?

[yahoo]

ive got a pc thats been playing up for quite a while now. its really infuriating as im quite stumped as to what to do.

what happens is after a fresh reinstall of windowsXP pro, everything works fine for about a day. then it starts to chkdsk on every startup and sometimes refuses to boot until i chkdsk it from the recovery console. (this is telling me its hard disk/cable/controller (so ive swapped the cable - same thing). now windows cant detect the correct hardware anymore; it has installed generic vga drivers for the onboard video and doesnt know what the soundcard is anymore (so no sound). Ive tried installing lastest drivers and i get a "the driver is not for this hardware blah blah" but it is!!

anyways, can anybody help me? im looking for answers - perferably what isnt working

p.s. i'll post the error log that is recorded every boot by event viewer-

Driver detected a controller error on \device\harddisk0\D (happens 18 times every boot)

A parity error was detected on device \ide\ideport0

thanks guys, you lot have always known my problems in the past. lets hope you can apply your genious to this too.

 

[franklin97355]

Sounds like the controller but if you can swap the drive that might give you more info. with IDE drives most of the controller is on the drive so it's hard to tell where the failure is. try swapping things around and see if the trouble follows a piece of equipment.

 

[yahoo]

yeah, im gunna try that, at the moment though all my hard disks are in use in various pc's. i can get hold of a 1.2gb hard disk this week sumtime

thanks for the info, i didnt know there was much of a controller onboard the hd

 

[SESaskDFC]

Howdy:

You aren't trying to get XP to run on a 1.2GB hard-drive are you?? If you are, then I think your problem may be here...

Here's What You Need to Use Windows XP Professional

1.5 gigabytes (GB) of available hard disk space*

* Actual requirements will vary based on your system configuration and the applications and features you choose to install. Additional available hard disk space may be required if you are installing over a network.

You are short a bit of hdd space....

Murray

 

[yahoo]

nah, the disk im talkin about is a 20gb ATA33 formatted into one ntfs partition.

the 1.2gb was the one i am going to swap with so i can check to see whats wrong.

 

[soaplover]

If you are unsure about your harddrive .
install som SMART monitoring sw (if your HDD is SMART capable) .
This is one i use myself.
Through the S.M.A.R.T. system, hard disk drives incorporate a suite of advanced diagnostics that monitor the internal operations of a drive and provide an early warning for many types of potential problems. When a potential problem is detected, the drive can be repaired or replaced before any data are lost. The S.M.A.R.T. system consists of software that resides both on the disk drive and on the computer. The software on the disk drive monitors the internal performance of the motors, media, heads, and electronics of the drive. The computer software (Active SMART) analyzes the drive's internal parameters and warns the user about all changes of drive's health status.

http://www.ariolic.com/activesmart/index.html

//Regards Soaplover

 

[geo87]

Most harddrive manufacturers have diagnostic tools on there website for there drives, download these tools and run the test.Most of these tools run from a floppy.

 

[yahoo]

ive run the samsung diagnostic, it says all clear. i'll try the s.m.a.r.t stuff thanks

 

[yahoo]

s.m.a.r.t says its fine, so does activesmart.