My XP computer is crashing repeatedly and I think it is due to an old, overheating hard drive. I've got 5 hard drives on this computer and they all run between 30* C and 38* C (86 - 100* F). The C:\ drive is the hot one and it crashes when it gets to 48* C (118* F). I've got plenty of ventilation in the box, so that's not the problem. I think the C:\ drive is overheating because it's my oldest drive - over 5 years old and probably on the way out. I"ve got an image of my C:\ drive and plenty of room to create a partition on a good, cool drive to make it my new C: drive. My question is, do I need to make the new partition the exact same size as the imaged drive was? My C:\ drive that I have an image of is 29.6 GB. The partion on the new drive that I would move it to is 100 GB. Do I need to repartioned that drive so one partition is the same size as the old C:\ drive I've imaged? thanks.
Thanks for the info Brian. That's good to know, but it just makes this problem more murky. I've been watching the temps all day and the C:\ drive or CPU never get to 49*. I just assumed that the problem was from overheating. Apparently these spontaneous reboots are from something else. It's weird, I get that blue screen with all the descriptive text but it doesn't last any longer than 1 second before the computer reboots. Since I can't read the blue screen, I'm not getting any clue as to its cause. It seems like the bsod I would get in the old days would happen, let you read it and you would power down and restart it on your own.
Mats, you should be able to prevent the reboot by removing the tick in Startup and Recovery (automatically restart choice.) Right click My Computer, Properties, Advanced tab, Startup and Recovery Settings, Automatically restart.
Thanks again, Brian. It froze again before I read your reply and this time I was able to 'Pause/Break' when the blue screen flashed. The bsod was the dreaded 'Machine Check Exception' saying there was a software or hardware problem. It suggested disabling BIOS memory options like caching or shadowing. I Googled all this and see some have luck with disabling external caching. Funny I would have this problem now after 3 stable years of running this motherboard, but I did disable external cache and will see how it goes. . . . well, after even more Googling, I see disabling external cache is going to cause some pretty serious performance issues and is only for troubleshooting the real problem. I checked Event Viewer and see lots of Warnings and Errors from my Promise Ultra IDE Controller saying I'm using outdated drivers. I checked Promise's site and just installed the updated driver. I reinstalled Windows a month ago and this is one driver I must have missed updating. Time will tell if this outdated driver was the problem. Thanks for your help Brian.
It looks like updating the drivers for the Promise IDE controller card was the ticket. This computer has been running error free for a day and a half now. Funny how it ran fine for a month after reinstalling XP but then had a dozen Blue Screens in a 4 hour period . . .
