Okay, I have had the worst experience trying to fix my computer. It all started a few weeks ago when my computer started to get really choppy and freeze. Pretty soon, I couldn't get it to boot into Windows (it would freeze during the Splash screen). I was able to get it up and running in safe mode for a few days before it finally died on me. I attempted to reinstall windows on the drive, but it froze during the install every time and I heard the nasty "clicks" from the hard drive. I should probably mention that this hard drive was a 30 GB Maxtor that was the master on my Primary IDE channel. Well, I bought a new 250GB Seagate SATA HD to replace it. I hooked it up to the primary SATA Channel (btw...I had removed the Maxtor at this point). Anyways, it took me a while to get Windows Installer to even recognize the drive (I had problems with the SATA drivers on the floppy). At this point I've had a plethora of problems....I don't really even know where to start. At first the new SATA drive was being recognized by the bios on startup, but not by the Windows Installer. I thoguht that this might be due to a loose cable or cruddy power connection. I essentially swapped it's location with the other SATA drive I had (which just contains a bunch of files) and it was recongnized by Windows Installer (the other SATA drive was always recognized). Anyways, sometimes when I get to the selection about where I want windows to install (which partition), it says that it cannot access my new drive. Which I find to be quite strange. After a few attempts, however, I got the new drive to be listed and I installed Windows on it. Rather, I tried. It froze twice in a row when there were "23 minutes" left on the install. The next time, I jiggled the mouse and it never did freeze, although it froze for a few seconds at a time throughout the later stages of the install. Furthermore, I recieved a few error messages saying that desktop.ini was corrupt and some other errors existed...somethign I've never seen when Installing windows, which I've done many times. I got into Windows....and it seemed to be fine. I could move the mouse around and got into all my hard drives that were installed. However, I still needed to format the other part of my new HD (I made two partitions on the new HD). I went to format it and it got about two blocks before it stopped moving. I cancelled and it said that the drive could not be formatted. I next right-clicked on "My Computer" and went to "manage" and then to "disk manager", where the computer froze. I turned it back on, but it couldn't load into windows saying that some strange file (that I've never heard of...can't remember it) was missing and windows couldn't load. I went to go to windows installer again, and now it says that windows cannot access my new sata hard drive. ===== Does anyone have any ideas as to why I could be experiencing these rip-your-hair-out problems? I thought that the slave HD on my primary IDE channel might be causing an error, but I uplugged it and I have the same problems. A friend of mine suggested that it might be some interoperability issue...but that wouldn't explain the inital problems. Oh, very important...and I nearly forgot. During my windows installs, my slave HD on the primary IDE channel seemed to make the strange clicking noise, which is why I unplugged it (as it shouldn't even be accessed). Then I began to hear the clicking noise out of my brand new Seagate HD that I was installing windows to. Which seems really really strange. I also don't think that it is a problem with my cd-rom, as I've tried installing from both of them, and I've tried installing from two different versions of windows XP. ------------------ I think that my next step will be to strip down my computer to the basics and try to see if I can get it to work...but the errrors don't make any sense to me...and I've troubleshooted many computers. Please help if you can. My computers is: AMD Athlon 2200+ Asus A7N8X Deluxe ATI Radeon 9500 Pro ATI TV Wonder PRO Creative Live! Platinum 2 x 256 MB Crucial Memory 45 GB Maxtor HD (Slave on Primary IDE) 250 GB Seagate HD (Primary on SATA) 150 GB Samsung HD (Secondary on SATA) Pioneer 16x DVD (Master on Secondary IDE) Plextor 32/12/10 (Slave on Secondary IDE) Anyways, I need to take a break as I've really been at it for the past two days...and it's driving me crazy. If you have any ideas or suggestions, I'll happily take them. Thanks so much...and if you read my whole post then I'm amazed since I now realize how much I wrote. I really appreciate the help. I need my computer up pretty badly. Sincerely, Jeremy

I will admit I did not read your entire post, but swap out your power supply and if did look around you room for other things, hell even the carepet could play into this. When you have a problem such a this you need to step back and look at the large picture. Take the system to friends house and see how it reacts there. Just suggestions and again, I did not read you entire post. KTTD

Your first problem sounded like a PSU problem, like Kevin suggested. The rest of it, especially the lack of SATA recognition, sounded like hardware issues. Now, your system sounds pretty good - not the most high-end, but certainly capable - and I've looked into your ASUS motherboard to see if it has any history causing malfunctions. You should be okay, which again makes me agree with Kevin. Most of your issues really seem to be your hard drives. It's common knowledge that Windows isn't too great with SATA/RAID drives, which might be apparent when it gives you a separate option when trying to install. Since you removed your Maxtor, I'm guessing you're using two new drives? If so, what I'd do is hock them and get non-SATA drives. But that's just me. You said you'd tried different Windows CDs and different HDD configurations to no avail. That definitely sounds like a main board/PSU problem. The clicking from a brand new drive might mean someone clumsily dropped it a few stories during shipping, your IDE cable is malfunctioning, or that your boot priority is causing the motherboard to not recognize it prematurely. Maybe it's trying to boot from it, even. Make sure your jumpers are all in the right place; clicking occurs when trying to boot from a blank drive. Even though you mentioned that your 150 was your slave drive, it never hurts to double check. I hope these suggestions are able to get you a little further in your quest. I know how it feels to lose a friend... I mean, piece of metal. Shuttle XPC SN95 AMD 3500+ @ 2.84 GHz Venice core ATI Radeon X800 XT 1 GB Corsair XMS 240 GB Western Digital HDD

Well, I'm going to try and strip the computer down to just the mobo/cpu/psu/one ram stick/vid card/1hd/1cd...the bare minimums to get it up and running. that should hopefully get rid of any strange conflict issues that could result between competing drives over primary/master. I'll report back when I get the chance sometime soon. If anyone has any other ideas please let me know. I would hope that it isn't my PSU. It is a fairly new Antec TruePower Blue480 Watt.

In order to boot properly, XP needs two files in the root of the hard disk..possibly either they are also on another hard drive confusing the bootup, or by removing a hard drive or another, you removed what is needed to boot Windows becasue it was in a partiton put on another drive. Windows XP users Insert the Windows XP bootable CD into the computer. When prompted to press any key to boot from the CD, press any key. Once in the Windows XP setup menu press the "R" key to repair Windows. Log into your Windows installation by pressing the "1" key and pressing enter. You will then be prompted for your administrator password, enter that password. Copy the below two files to the root directory of the primary hard disk. In the below example we are copying these files from the CD-ROM drive letter "E". This letter may be different on your computer. copy e:\i386\ntldr c:\ copy e:\i386\ntdetect.com c:\ Once both of these files have been successfully copied, remove the CD from the computer and reboot