HD stops and restarts at XP launch

[Fred]

Hi,

I've bought a Western Digital 80GB drive 2 weeks ago. It
has been working perfectly until yesterday. My computer
was running fine, when suddenly, I heard a clicking
sound, the PC shut down and started the normal reboot
process.

But since then, Windows XP won't load properly, every
time the light-blue screen appears, the hard drive stops
spinning for a second and powers-up right after, causing
the computer to reboot.

I have tried :
- every boot-up option, from Automatic System Recovery to
Last Known Working parameters
- restoring the OS from a ghost
- to disable all other IDE drives, and I've also tried
other IDE cables / power cables.

It is just about the same : either the computer won't
load Windows, or it works for a few seconds and shuts
down at the blue welcome screen. The WD800 is the only
drive that stop and starts again, so I assume it is
causing the problem. I have 3 other IDE drives on this
PC : 2 IBM drives and a WD400, and they seem to work fine.

I don't use the RAID feature of my ABIT KG7 but to run my
4 IDE drives and 2 DVD Rom units. To conclude, I have
noticed that Windows Event Log shows an ACPI alert which
wasn't there before. Maybe there is something to dig in
that area. And, last but not least, my power supply runs
fine since everything else still has power.

Thanks for any help you could provide, I'm running out of
options and I definitely don't wan't to exchange my hard
drive ;-)

Frederic.

 

[flamebot]

I think WD prolly has a diagnostic program you can download or get from
their tech support that will verify it is a broke harddrive before you
return it. If you bought it at a store nearby, I would just return it there
or WD used to be good about sending new drives out fairly quick to replace
faulty ones.