crashing harddrives

[hoovers]

I dont know if this has anything to do with AHII but in the last month I have lost three harddrives on two different computers playing AHII.  If anybody has any Ideas please let me know. One of the computers that I lost two drives one was a 2.2 pentium 4 with a 120 gig western digital and a 40 gig western digital.  When that computer went down the last time I switch to my old computer.  A 900 amd athalon with a unknown hard drive.  It usually takes about a week then I started getting errors that I have lost files till the computer doesnt function.  I have been keeping the computer very cool so I dont think heat is the problem.   Any advice or help would be greatly apprecitated.

Hoovers

[AaronM2]

errrrr i gota say think mines about to poop 2 LOL gota a 120gb Pentuim 4 2.80ghz Ht technology 512mb ram when i play Ah2 all i hear is bbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbb bbbbbbbuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuu uuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuu uuuuuz sucks hope it doesnt happen to my new comp im building ill never play Ah2 again

[Roscoroo]

bugs bugs and more bugs ... sounds like a virus ...

i'm not really a fan of wd hard drives (ive had 3 fail ) but they ussually dont go out that fast . (they like to wait til the warrenty expires at least )

id take the bad drives and slave them up in a running pc . (dont run any of the .exe's on them) and run a good virus scanner on that drive .  You will have to enter the bios and beshure the hd is reconized 1st.

if it has trouble running then try turning off the S.m.a.r.t. in the bios .  

if its the generic WD hd it should have a 1 year warrenty on it , RMA it .

[Blooz]

Are you constantly reformatting your drives?

Hard drives that have lots of low level reformats on them tend to scramble the files after awhile.

Use only high level formatting for hard drives. They are low level formatted at the factory.

If this isn't the case, are you in a smoking or dusty environment?

Small kids using your computer case as a football maybe?

All I can think of.

[AaronM2]

no virus here check evey other week

[hoovers]

Thankyou for your replies.  I have virus scan on alot and I scan my computers constantly for virus and adware.  At first I thought it was heat so I fixed that problem.  I must just be having bad luck.  Maybe I will try a high level format next.     Hoovers

[Schutt]

Do you have the jumpers set correct and the cable seated?

A lot of harddrive problems are from wrong jumper settings or loose plugs.

Also, do you move your comp while it is running? Give any bumps to the harddrive? Kick your comp with the feet while playing ah2?

To me the problems sound like a handling issue.. having hard drives fail now and than can happen, but your troubles seem to be way to many.

Eaven giving the hard drive a short drop on a hard surface can damage them, when fumbling in the computer i saw people "drop" the hard drives in place... that will hurt them too.

ciao schutt

[Stone]

I had some strange problems with my old PC, files got corrupted for no reason and I got blue screens etc.

When I run checkdisk ("chkdsk /f /r")  it allways found corrupt files

I used that PC 2 years like that

The pc did not want to even boot normaly. I had to turn main power off and on severall times, to get it to boot.

Well one day I wanted to add yet an other card to the pc, a wlan pci card. Then the probles got worse

It would not turn on at all.

It would turn on if I removed a PCI card (sound or wlan), so I figured it might be a power problem, and bought a new power suply.

Well it did not help so I bought a new motherboard and the problems dissapeard.

It seems my old mother board had some technicall issues.
Some components on it looked like they had swelled and leaked.
(maybe they are called condensators?)

How that resulted in corrupt files I have no idea, but the same disk works ok now with the new MOBO

How to test if this is the case for you I have no idea

But lately I noticed two other cases where strange problems occure, and on those both had swollen components on the mobo.
Guess they dont make em as they used

[AaronM2]

yea with this hunk of junk keept getin a blue screen saying memory dumb for no reson evey time i did a virus check it did that so i wrote zeros to hard drive :)M works fin now but that hard drives still buzzin all the time i hate it it sounds like a wee d eater

[llama]

In my experience, losing lots of hard drives at once is either bad luck, lots of heat, or you have a power problem with your 120 Volts AC.

I repair computers for a living, and in almost every case where you would think the computer was running on an old indian burial ground due to hardware failures, a UPS (uniterruptable power supply) has solved the problem.

Try it.

-Llama

[la7'sRule]

Ok most ppl kill hard disks due to incompetance,

Always shut down our pc properly,
run scan disk every time power fails or other problems occur that means u could not power off pc corectly

Defrag your hard disk drive atleast 1ce a month (more if you moove files around a lot and delete and install things often)

Download and install avg antivirus software It's free and Really works well although it is slighhtly restricted.

also download kerio personal fire wall This is also free and worls Really well.

Now i must admit that i do not see how aces high could corupt a hard disk,

here are some possibilaties

check where the ribon cable plugs in to your hard disk. See if any pins have been pushed in to the hard disk if so try and pull em back.
Also hard disk dirve ribon cables should Only be pluged in to hard drive and ide port 1 way (usualy red wire on the left) There should be a little lump on the conector so u cannot push it in the wrong way. However some oledr cables dont have the lump. but if u look real closley You can see where it should be,

Or

You are infected with a virus,worm,trojan exetera.
download the above  mentioned programs.
Also download spy bot or pest patroll.
I personaly use pest patroll But i beleve spy bot is free,

Also

Jumper settings May cause hard disk drive problems make shure they are correct.
also make shure that you havent changed hard disk acsess modes in your bios since you installed programs,

I have a really old fujitsu 5gb hard disk that has died 5 times.
You can rescu them if you really try.

Hope this helps.


La7sRule  "aka Shambles"
registerkks@hotmail.com
dflw.2ya.com

[la7'sRule]

Single Install:

Make sure your drive is identified on the boot up screen. If not, please refer to our knowledge base article on how to identify drives in your BIOS, Answer ID 54.

Insert the Windows XP CD into the CD-ROM drive and restart the system.

Note: If your drive is connected to a controller card, ATA/66/100 controller, or Raid controller, you may need to press the F6 key to load the driver for the controller before XP can find a drive to install to. See Answer ID 127 for more information.


Once at the partitioning option screen create the partition size you want by pressing C. If you are formatting using FAT32, each partition cannot be larger than 32GB. For more information about this limitation, please see Microsoft Article 184006.

If you are formatting using NTFS, there is no size limit on partitions. After the partition(s) have been created and formatted, continue with the Windows XP installation.



--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Adding a Second Drive:
Make sure your drive is identified on the boot up screen. If not, please refer to our knowledge base article on how to identify drives in your BIOS, Answer ID 54.

Access Disk Management by first clicking on the Start button.

Select Run.

In the text box type diskmgmt.msc and click OK

When Disk Management opens, a wizard may appear entitled: Initialize and Convert Disk Wizard.
Note: You must use this wizard to write a Signature to the drive otherwise, the drive will not work with Windows XP. If the wizard does not appear, you may need to manually complete this process following the steps below:



Right click on the name of the drive to be initialized. (Drives are numbered as follows: drive 0 being the boot drive and drive 1-3 are all other drives. For CDs, the first CD is CD 0 the second CD 1 and so forth.)

Choose Initialize from the menu that appears.

The next screen shows the drive you selected to initialize. Make sure the drive is checked and click Next.

You will have the option to convert the drive from basic to dynamic storage.
Leave this unchecked and click Next.

Click Finish



For more information about Basic and Dynamic storage, see Answer ID 282.

Partitioning/Formatting:

Note: In two separate windows, on the right side of the screen, a graphical representation of the partitions on the installed drives will be displayed. The top window is for viewing a drive’s status, capacity, and file system. In the bottom window, you will see a representation of the drives in the system starting with the boot drive (drive 0). In almost all cases, you will want to work with the bottom window.
Once the disk is initialized, right-click in the unallocated space.

Click on Create Partition from the menu.

A new wizard will appear: Create Partition Wizard. Click Next to continue.

On the next screen select either Primary or Extended Partition and click Next to continue.

You may assign a drive letter that is not in use by other devices if you wish, then click Next to continue.

Select the type of format (NTFS or FAT32). Leave the allocation unit size at default and label the drive as desired.

Enter the desired partition size. If using FAT32, your partition cannot be larger than 32GB.

Click Finish when done.

[hoovers]

Thankyou for all the advice and help.  I believe I found the problem.  Nothing to do with aces high II.  I found out my air conditioner is hook on same circuit as my computer and I dont have a device to keep my power level from dipping to low or high.  Have not had any trouble since I unplugged air conditioner from circuit.  My dumb mistake and I apologize for thinking it might be AHII.  Love the game.  Keep it rolling.

Hoovers

[fuzeman]

Glad you found the cause and its a good thing for all to make a note of. Stable power is always good to have.
As for assuming AH was the cause, it's always easy to look for problems where the light is [ when AH was running ] but sometimes the problem is found in the dark [ nothing to do with AH ] as was the case here.