A Big Mystery to Me -- Update

[Kenneth]

Hello all,

This is an update to my post from 5/14. I've since got my system to be
stable while booting. I've tried two power supplies in my system. I went
back to an older power supply and it went completely wacky when I fired up a
game (Flight Sim 2004). I put back in the newer power supply and my
readings were more stable. However, it's the general concensus in this
group that my 400w power supply still isn't necessarily enough and may be
causing problems. So, I think I'm probably going to try to get a new power
supply. Any recommendations on a good, QUIET ~500w power supply?

Also, I'm at a loss for whether or not I should get a new storage drive. I
haven't had any other problems out of it not booting up or anything,
however, it does have 4KB bad reported by Chkdsk (full report below). Do
you folks think that I need to get a new hard drive, aslo? I'm thinking
about replacing this with a Serial ATA drive, I have a feeling that would
offer better performance over my current setup, and would probably work
better for the little bit of home video editing that I do.

That said, is a Serial ATA 7200RPM drive necessarily better than an EIDE
7200RPM drive? I've noticed that my motherboard (Asus P4PE) supports
SATA... without knowing much about this new spec, can I have and EIDE
primary master (w/cdrom slave) and a SATA secondary master (w/ internal zip
slave)?

Many, many, many thanks in advance. It looks like I'm going to have to
spend money on some components for this system, I just don't want to spend
them on the wrong thing.

Here's the chkdsk result for my storage drive:

Checking file system on F:
The type of the file system is NTFS.
Volume label is Storage.

A disk check has been scheduled.
Windows will now check the disk.
Cleaning up 4 unused index entries from index $SII of file 0x9.
Cleaning up 4 unused index entries from index $SDH of file 0x9.
Cleaning up 4 unused security descriptors.
CHKDSK is verifying Usn Journal...
Usn Journal verification completed.
CHKDSK is verifying file data (stage 4 of 5)...
File data verification completed.
CHKDSK is verifying free space (stage 5 of 5)...
Free space verification is complete.

117210208 KB total disk space.
94090276 KB in 39978 files.
16796 KB in 3602 indexes.
4 KB in bad sectors.
156400 KB in use by the system.
65536 KB occupied by the log file.
22946732 KB available on disk.

4096 bytes in each allocation unit.
29302552 total allocation units on disk.
5736683 allocation units available on disk.

Thanks,
Kenneth

 

[Kenneth]

7

Hello all,

This is an update to my post from 5/14. I've since got my system to be
stable while booting. I've tried two power supplies in my system. I went
back to an older power supply and it went completely wacky when I fired up a
game (Flight Sim 2004). I put back in the newer power supply and my
readings were more stable. However, it's the general concensus in this
group that my 400w power supply still isn't necessarily enough and may be
causing problems. So, I think I'm probably going to try to get a new power
supply. Any recommendations on a good, QUIET ~500w power supply?

Also, I'm at a loss for whether or not I should get a new storage drive. I
haven't had any other problems out of it not booting up or anything,
however, it does have 4KB bad reported by Chkdsk (full report below). Do
you folks think that I need to get a new hard drive, aslo? I'm thinking
about replacing this with a Serial ATA drive, I have a feeling that would
offer better performance over my current setup, and would probably work
better for the little bit of home video editing that I do.

That said, is a Serial ATA 7200RPM drive necessarily better than an EIDE
7200RPM drive? I've noticed that my motherboard (Asus P4PE) supports
SATA... without knowing much about this new spec, can I have and EIDE
primary master (w/cdrom slave) and a SATA secondary master (w/ internal zip
slave)?

Many, many, many thanks in advance. It looks like I'm going to have to
spend money on some components for this system, I just don't want to spend
them on the wrong thing.

Here's the chkdsk result for my storage drive:

Checking file system on F:
The type of the file system is NTFS.
Volume label is Storage.

A disk check has been scheduled.
Windows will now check the disk.
Cleaning up 4 unused index entries from index $SII of file 0x9.
Cleaning up 4 unused index entries from index $SDH of file 0x9.
Cleaning up 4 unused security descriptors.
CHKDSK is verifying Usn Journal...
Usn Journal verification completed.
CHKDSK is verifying file data (stage 4 of 5)...
File data verification completed.
CHKDSK is verifying free space (stage 5 of 5)...
Free space verification is complete.

117210208 KB total disk space.
94090276 KB in 39978 files.
16796 KB in 3602 indexes.
4 KB in bad sectors.
156400 KB in use by the system.
65536 KB occupied by the log file.
22946732 KB available on disk.

4096 bytes in each allocation unit.
29302552 total allocation units on disk.
5736683 allocation units available on disk.

Thanks,
Kenneth

Also, take a look at these graphs. This first one is the one of the older,
noisier 400w power supply (the one that I replaced the newer one with
briefly /after/ I started having problems. Obviously, this one was bonkers:
http://www.taylormadecom.com/test/power-old.png

This is of the newer, quieter power supply, that has been running fairly
flawlessly on my computer for nearly a year now.
http://www.taylormadecom.com/test/power-newer.png

Do you still think it's the power supply? Obviously, the older one is
messed up, but I haven't even had that in my system for months. Both of
these screenshots were taken with roughly the same applications open taxing
the system at roughly the same amount (both were while running Flight Sim
2004 doing identical flights).

Thanks,
Kenneth

 

[DaveW]

Antec 550 Watt Tru-Power power supply unit. It si very conservatively rated
in its power output, according to Tom's Hardware Guide.