Theories invited.

[Waldo2k2]

Well the easiest way to tell would be to disconnect the hard drive and boot up, see if it happens.

[Tronic]

Wow..never seen anything like that before or heard

Tried scandisc I take it? What'd you get for results?

[adrianxw]

I don't have a mike, so can't record it. Scandisk is fine. I also downloaded a special disk diagnostic/exerciser from Maxtor, called PowerMax which I have run several times, always it says "congratulations - your drive is certified".

Today, I got a BSOD, stop code 8E. I was sitting at the machine when it happened. It dumped memory into its file, and just as it finished, the disk drive went "pop". It almost sounds as if it is powering down, or yanking the heads out, definitely a mechanical kind of sound.

[Waldo2k2]

have you tried disconnecting the drive and booting like I said to see if the drive is really the problem?

[adrianxw]

>>> have you tried disconnecting the drive and booting like I said to see if the drive is really the problem?

I don't have any scheduled downtime until Sunday, so no, I haven't.

[Tronic]

d00de..maxor lies!! o.o

cr8zy man..I seriously have no clue..don't have access to the machine so <_< blah.

[Waldo2k2]

>>d00de..maxor lies!! o.o
>>cr8zy man..I seriously have no clue..don't have access to the machine so <_< blah.

wow...that helped a lot

[adrianxw]

I removed the disk and booted from the XP CD, upon shutdown, when the pop usually happens - it did not. Therefore I am now absolutely certain, the sound comes from the disk drive and not the speaker. I assume that is what you were getting at.

The machine hasn't actually crashed today yet.

Something I've noticed is that when it freezes, the "disk activity" light is hard on. I'm not sure that is the case when I get the BSOD's. The light is controlled by the motherboard, not the disk of course.

[Waldo2k2]

perhaps the ide controller is going bad...causing the drive to jump quickly to home when shutting down?? do you have a spare pci ide controller around to test that theory?

[adrianxw]

No, I don't. Most of the freezes/crashes are happening during periods of intense disk activity. This morning, it crashed whilst NAV was doing it's sceduled scan, browsing the NAV log, it seems that this is not the first time, (NAV posts the scan started message, but never gets to the scan finished).

This morning, it froze while I was browsing here. Seti@Home was running, so the CPU was flat out, but the peripheral system was really pretty quiet. This is a maddening problem.

[Waldo2k2]

that's just really strange, the only thing I can think of trying is perhaps using a spare computer, putting that hard drive in it and seeing if the problem happens there. If not, then you can rule out the hard drive and blame something else...but that popping noise just confuses me. Is this computer critical? Ie: is it a server?

[adrianxw]

It is the only system I currently have which is spec'd high enough to run XP, (2.533 GHz P4). It is my local and internet server, it's principle purpose. I also have Visual Studio .NET on it but I a m not using that very much, (current projects are all in VS 6 which runs on another machine).

I have been considering flashing the BIOS, on Sunday, I ripped it open because the BIOS download site said I had to get the mobo rev number, damned if I could find it though. It is not where the BIOS page says it should be. I have been sent a photograph of a mobo of "the same" type, however, it shows the model number in a quite different place to the number on my board. Frustrated at every turn!

I'd get a new drive, but if the I/O system is overloaded with one almost empty, (it's got XP on it - did I say empty), drive, I can't see how adding a drive can help. If the drive is crapped, why does everything tell me it's perfect, that PowerMax software takes about 30 minutes to do it's checks, and is booted from a floppy, so there shouldn't be areas on the disk it can't look at. At the same time, it is really thrashing the drive, and hence the I/O subsystem as well and it works fine!!!

I guess I could get a new mobo, a better one at that. I don't know.

[Waldo2k2]

well maybe there's something wrong with windows....exactly how loud is this pop? Could it be caused by windows seeking somewhere on the drive that's off in la la land, causing the drive to do a "hard stop" of sorts? I really don't know the in's and out's of how xp accesses hardware so I dont know if that's a possibility, maybe you should do a backup and run a system restore/reinstall or whatever then apply all the patches again. Maybe something got harshed in windows....beats me, there's not much I can do not having the thing in front of me ya know?

[Hunter2]

Has anyone suggested replacing the drive and seeing if the problem persists? Even if your CPUs and whatnot on the other computers is too slow for XP, I'm sure the harddrive could be swapped.

**EDIT
Hmm interesting, my suggestion was the exact inverse of Waldo's, but with the exact same effect

[major_small]

I would back everything up, try to wipe the drive, and go with a clean install of XP, then see if the pop still happens... if so, wipe it again and install another OS and see if it still happens...