Howdy,
Is there a good stress tester/stability checker for HDDs that I can use? Windows no longer has ScanDisk (that was what it was called right?) in the start menu anymore, and I am worried my HDD MIGHT have some issues?
I emphasis MIGHT above as I do actaulyl think the problems I am getting is cos of my RAM... I think being clocked too much, so I am running memtest now... although Orthos ran on Blend for 18hrs yest without fail?
The problem was first encountered when I got my PC on Thursday, I built it and the result was:
ASUS P5N-E SLi
C2D E6600 :: 3.4ghz
GeIL 2GB PC6400C4 DDR2 800mhz :: 4-4-4-12 800mhz
Corsair HX 620W PSU
2xSeagate Barracuda7200.10 250GB SATA-II 16mb Cache
BFG 8800GTX OC 768mb
Well when I first booted the PC up I went in the BIOS and done the usual guff, then installed XP. XP installed fine, but when it cometo its first boot I woul get a lovly blue screen of death saying Windows stopped booting to prevent damage to my PC. Check for viruses, remove any new HDD's or HDD controllers etc etc.
When this first happened I installed Windows on my second brandnew seagate to see if it was that, and the same thing occurred. So at this point I though either both HDD's are faulty, or its sumin else... So I assumed it was sumin else.
Well whenever I have problems in the past, I always seem to pin point it to the RAM, so I removed one stick of ram from slot 3 (I used slot 1 & slot 3)and booted and low and behold, I was into Windows. Shut down, put my RAM back into slot 2 this time opposed to slot 3, and windows booted fine again. So I assumed at this point that my mobo didnt like slot 1 & 3 and it had to be slot 1 & 2 formattion which was fine.
Well I had windows installed on the HDD I didnt want it installed on at this point, so I formatted again, swapped SATA-II cables round and installed on the other HDD. I expeected to get into windows after installation this time, but no... I got that beautiful blue screen again... this worried/confused me. So I removed one stick of ram again and booted, woohoo I was in Windows, shut down put the stick back in the SAME slot it was in, booted and no probs again I was in windows.
Well I have rebooted bout 500 times since and not had a problem!
I overclocked my PC the other day, and got my RAM to 4-4-4-12 850mhz and the E6600 to 3.4ghz (I have the not so overclocakble batch of C2D's so I cannot get anymore out of it) and I ran Orthos for 18hrs without fail.
At this point I though all was good, so I started playing S.T.A.L.K.E.R as I wanted to play that max res (1920x1200) and maxed out settings, and I can, it runs like a dream. Well I was fiddling with settings, and started playing and my PC shut down, and as it did I caught a glimpse of that blue screen again... I assume it has the same wording to it.
So this has just got me thinking its the HDD that might have errors on it? I do doubt its that, as I set my RAM back to default of 800mhz and uped the DDR voltage to 2.2 (GeIL recommend 2.1v - 2.3v) and played S.T.A.L.K.E.R for about 30mins (I will play longer later, just wanted to run memtest) and it didnt have a prob.
So I am running memtest now, and I am half way thru test 7 and its ok so far... so I would like to just run a test on my HDD aswell if possible? Are there any tools out there for testing the integrity of the HDD? Can I use windows scan disk some how?
I wanna test all my components to their limit to see if the prob occurs again!
Sorry for the length of this, but I wanted to go into detail just incase you have an idea what else it could be!
ta
Is there a good stress tester/stability checker for HDDs that I can use? Windows no longer has ScanDisk (that was what it was called right?) in the start menu anymore, and I am worried my HDD MIGHT have some issues?
I emphasis MIGHT above as I do actaulyl think the problems I am getting is cos of my RAM... I think being clocked too much, so I am running memtest now... although Orthos ran on Blend for 18hrs yest without fail?
The problem was first encountered when I got my PC on Thursday, I built it and the result was:
ASUS P5N-E SLi
C2D E6600 :: 3.4ghz
GeIL 2GB PC6400C4 DDR2 800mhz :: 4-4-4-12 800mhz
Corsair HX 620W PSU
2xSeagate Barracuda7200.10 250GB SATA-II 16mb Cache
BFG 8800GTX OC 768mb
Well when I first booted the PC up I went in the BIOS and done the usual guff, then installed XP. XP installed fine, but when it cometo its first boot I woul get a lovly blue screen of death saying Windows stopped booting to prevent damage to my PC. Check for viruses, remove any new HDD's or HDD controllers etc etc.
When this first happened I installed Windows on my second brandnew seagate to see if it was that, and the same thing occurred. So at this point I though either both HDD's are faulty, or its sumin else... So I assumed it was sumin else.
Well whenever I have problems in the past, I always seem to pin point it to the RAM, so I removed one stick of ram from slot 3 (I used slot 1 & slot 3)and booted and low and behold, I was into Windows. Shut down, put my RAM back into slot 2 this time opposed to slot 3, and windows booted fine again. So I assumed at this point that my mobo didnt like slot 1 & 3 and it had to be slot 1 & 2 formattion which was fine.
Well I had windows installed on the HDD I didnt want it installed on at this point, so I formatted again, swapped SATA-II cables round and installed on the other HDD. I expeected to get into windows after installation this time, but no... I got that beautiful blue screen again... this worried/confused me. So I removed one stick of ram again and booted, woohoo I was in Windows, shut down put the stick back in the SAME slot it was in, booted and no probs again I was in windows.
Well I have rebooted bout 500 times since and not had a problem!
I overclocked my PC the other day, and got my RAM to 4-4-4-12 850mhz and the E6600 to 3.4ghz (I have the not so overclocakble batch of C2D's so I cannot get anymore out of it) and I ran Orthos for 18hrs without fail.
At this point I though all was good, so I started playing S.T.A.L.K.E.R as I wanted to play that max res (1920x1200) and maxed out settings, and I can, it runs like a dream. Well I was fiddling with settings, and started playing and my PC shut down, and as it did I caught a glimpse of that blue screen again... I assume it has the same wording to it.
So this has just got me thinking its the HDD that might have errors on it? I do doubt its that, as I set my RAM back to default of 800mhz and uped the DDR voltage to 2.2 (GeIL recommend 2.1v - 2.3v) and played S.T.A.L.K.E.R for about 30mins (I will play longer later, just wanted to run memtest) and it didnt have a prob.
So I am running memtest now, and I am half way thru test 7 and its ok so far... so I would like to just run a test on my HDD aswell if possible? Are there any tools out there for testing the integrity of the HDD? Can I use windows scan disk some how?
I wanna test all my components to their limit to see if the prob occurs again!
Sorry for the length of this, but I wanted to go into detail just incase you have an idea what else it could be!
ta
