Simviation Forums

OK, so heres the symptoms: everything is running smoothly, no problems what so ever. Then, while in the middle of a normal task- dragging an icon -the system freezes solid. As-in nothing works, the mouse pointer won't move, and Cntrl+Alt+Del doesn't do anything, so I push reset. Everytime it boots up after that, it freezes again after about 10 seconds. The only new thing on the system is a new hard drive, and its sitting right below the old one in the tower. So I think something might be wrong with it, and un-plug it. Now here I am with no problems again. The new HD feels pretty warm to the touch, and so does the old one, is it possible that together they are creating to much heat and automatically stopping because of a fail-safe system? or is my new drive "bad" in some way?

Hard drives generally don't run hot enough for them to overheat. If you really want to cool it, open up your case and put a regular desktop fan next to your case and see if your problems continue. A faulty hard drive is also hard to come by these days. However, if you are indeed that unlucky, try testing it in another computer or perhaps exchanging it for a new one.

Way ahead of you, I moved the drives as far apart as possiple, and aimed a small but powerful fan between them. The problems have sort of stopped, but not completely and I'm beginning to think it's software related. http://www.simviation.com/cgi-bin/yabb/YaBB.cgi?board=COF;action=display;num=1122351298

OH MY GOD, I FIGURED IT OUT!!!! sorry for the yelling, but I've been battling this for two days. I never thought I would be happy to say this but... MY HARD DRIVE IS DEFECTIVE!! WOO HOO!! why is that good? because now I can go exchange it with confidence. It dawned on me when I decided to snoop around the FS9 folder after having used the computer for a good hour without incident. FS9 is the only thing on that drive, so it had not been accessed the whole time, then as soon as I do something with that drive- BINGO, the whole system freezes. Thank you for your potential help, but I think I have it under control now.

It's more likely that you haven't set the drive up correctly than to actually have a defective drive.

IDE detection and configuration can be a bit dodgy with some mainboards and bios's

Normally, the IDE devices can be configured by two different methods.

1. Jumper Select Mode by configuring "Master" and/or "Slave" drives on the IDE devices using the jumpers provided on the drives.

By Jumper Select Mode, there can only be one slave and one master on each IDE cable for a maximum total of two drives, master and slave. The boot drive should be Master on the first (primary) IDE channel.

2. Cable Select Mode by configuring the jumpers on all devices to "Cable Select".

In Cable Select Mode, the device on the "end" of the cable should auto-configure as the Master drive, and the device on the "inside" position on the cable will configure as the Slave drive. This will only work if all drives are set to the "Cable Select" jumper position.


Some boards don't quite seem to always follow the rules, and I've seen instances where drives set to jumper select also need to be configured on the cable as "Master/end position", Slave/inside position".

Check all your IDE devices for correct jumper settings and cabling, as this is more than likely the problem due to the number of possible incorrect settings.

To eliminate the possibility of a mainboard I/O chip fault causing the problem, (assuming cabling is correct), another IDE device could be configured in the position of the suspect drive to see if it works instead.

Is the new drive able to be recognised properly by your chipset? Some new and larger drives do not configure correctly on some older systems.

Someone at the factory tests the drives before they send them out for distribution, that's why it's unlikely, though possible, for a drive to be DOA.

Heres the update. I exchanged the drives- before reading Congos post -and I still had the same problem. So I called Seagate tech support, and they had never heard of this problem before (I hate it when tech support goes "what?! wow!") but they suggested that I try putting the new drive on a different IDE channel than the master drive. I tried that and things worked for about 15 minutes, then back to the same old problem. Tech support also suggested that I try making the new drive a single master drive. So I tryed that. Everything worked wonderfully untill I tried to run FS then it was back to freezing solid at random. So that got me thinking, maybe somehow something is wrong with FS, even though its a brand new install with absolutely no add-ons or alterations. So I installed another game, and guess what? It freezes solid with the other game too. After attempting to run the second game it will now freeze up as soon as windows finishes loading on start-up.

SOOO, my new theory is that something else began having problems and it just happened to be at the time as I am working with this new drive. My guess is RAM, because on one of the start-up sequences (I've done probably 50 of them in the last 3 days) I got a "memory test failed" message and Windows wouldnt load. There was also a message that said something to the effect of "Memory: 0Mb" I dont remember exactly what it said, but it was basically telling me that I had no RAM. The other thing that leads me to believe its the RAM is that all games use as much RAM as they can, and it only starts having problems when loading a game.

I leave for Oshkosh in the morning, so this will have to wait untill I get back on Monday. But in the mean time, tell me what you guys think. Am I on to something this time?