Ghost in the Machine

[Scribner]

This has been going on for awhile. Of my 6 hard drives, the middle
4's icons in My Computer have defaulted to the Window's "Unknown"
icon. The icons start out normal for a fraction of a second, then
they change. Also, I cannot get a certain web page. I also cannot
get this site's crawl at another web site. However, when I disable
Plug and Play in Services, everything comes back. But, when I do
this, the system really slows down. I have run numerous anti-virus
and anti-spyware scans from different manufacturers yet I come up
clean. Any ideas/suggestions? Thanks.

 

[Malke]

This has been going on for awhile. Of my 6 hard drives, the middle
4's icons in My Computer have defaulted to the Window's "Unknown"
icon. The icons start out normal for a fraction of a second, then
they change. Also, I cannot get a certain web page. I also cannot
get this site's crawl at another web site. However, when I disable
Plug and Play in Services, everything comes back. But, when I do
this, the system really slows down. I have run numerous anti-virus
and anti-spyware scans from different manufacturers yet I come up
clean. Any ideas/suggestions? Thanks.

What are the specs for your power supply? What motherboard? Are these
drives SATA?

Malke

 

[Scribner]

What are the specs for your power supply?

Antec 350 w
What motherboard?
Asus BE7II

Are these

drives SATA?

IDE

XP Pro SP-2
1 meg of memory.
Norton AV Corp.
Zone Alarm Suite 5

 

[Malke]

Antec 350 w
What motherboard?
Asus BE7II

Are these
IDE

XP Pro SP-2
1 meg of memory.
Norton AV Corp.
Zone Alarm Suite 5

Antec makes nice power supplies, but I wonder if yours is adequate for 6
hard drives and some optical drives. I rather doubt it. Does the
problem only occur with the Internet? Or just in general (which is what
it sounds like from your description)? I'm going to give you some
general hardware troubleshooting steps to run through. Pay particular
attention to overheating and power supply.


1) Open the computer and run it open, cleaning out all dust bunnies and
observing all fans (overheating will cause system freezing). Obviously
you can't do this with a laptop, but you can hear if the fan is running
and feel if the laptop is getting too hot.

2) Test the RAM - I like Memtest86+ from www.memtest.org - let the test
run for an extended (like overnight) period of time - unless errors are
seen immediately.

3) Test the hard drive with a diagnostic utility from the mftr.

4) The power supply may be going bad or be inadequate for the devices
you have in the system - this isn't applicable to a laptop, of course.

5) Test the motherboard with something like TuffTest from
www.tufftest.com.

Testing hardware failures often involves swapping out suspected parts
with known-good parts. If you can't do the testing yourself and/or are
uncomfortable opening your computer, take the machine to a good local
computer repair shop (not a CompUSA or Best Buy type of store).

Malke