P4P800 SATA, WINXP Pro and the rest.

[User]

My machine:
P4 2.4 533MHZ CPU
P4P800
1Gig DDR 333MHZ
2x 80 Gig (Maxtor 6Y080L0)
1x 40 Gig (IBM-DTLA-305040)
1x 160 Gig Maxtor SATA (MA6Y160M0)
Diamond Data 52x24x52 (DD523252) Burner
350W PSU

Ok, I am running Win2k Server on my Primary Master (1x 80 Gig drive)
and just bought a 160 gig SATA drive to install WinXP w/SP1 onto (on a
160G partition).

I am experiencing some sort of problem with my SATA drive where it
just restarts after XP is setup and running at a completely random
time - I may be able to handle a random restart (although this is a
major problem and unacceptable), but my problem is when this occurs I
have not been able to recover XP without reinstalling it all again
(with a full format) as if the file system spits the dummy.... I don't
think I have gotten past maybe 5-6 reboots until this happens.

The last time that it has restarted it was after I successfully
installed WinXP, Falcon 4 & BF1942, then went for a defrag - when I
came back it was restarting into blue screens. This happens even with
my non-boot 40G & 80Gig drives, with the 160Gig drive on its own power
plug, no fans or CD drives etc

Someone please help, I cannot handle going for another XP rebuild
(this will be the 7th or 8th time) only for this to happen again.

Thanks for any help in advance.

 

[Clark]

Possible info. Some of the things you are describing sound like what a
salesman in a retail store told me would happen if I used a cheap power
supply. Now I am not implying yours is cheap, but with that load in may be
inadequate.

I haven't gotten into the Serial ATA thing yet, but have you made sure your
bios is set up to handle that configuration, and does it handle a large hard
drive like that? You might check around and see if that partition size is
OK, because I don't know for sure.

Purely a guess,
Clark

 

[User]

Possible info. Some of the things you are describing sound like what a
salesman in a retail store told me would happen if I used a cheap power
supply. Now I am not implying yours is cheap, but with that load in may be
inadequate.

I haven't gotten into the Serial ATA thing yet, but have you made sure your
bios is set up to handle that configuration, and does it handle a large hard
drive like that? You might check around and see if that partition size is
OK, because I don't know for sure.

Purely a guess,
Clark

Hi Clark,

Thanks for the suggestion, while I was skeptical of the PSU as it came
with the box, but it turned out to be a faulty unit ( it finally
failed ). I now have a 160 SATA Seagate (they were out of Maxtor stock
for the day) which works quite well with no problems on a 160Gig
partition using XP Pro w/SP-1.

Only one install was needed this time Thanks.