xp reinstall

[sriegel]

Hi all,
first time to this site, what a great one!
i just completed a clean install on a home-brew pc. asrock 939 board, wd sata drive, with XP. got everthing loaded and running fine, restarts were good. shut down for dinner, went to restart to continue and it won't even post. sends a message about booting to the chosen drive, no matter how i change it in the bios setup.
oh, and my hd is making a cyclical sound, sort of like a whir (spinning) followed by a couple of click, then repeats constantly.

should i just reinstall xp? i find it hard to believe the hd is damaged, when it's all of 24 hours old, and ran perfectly through the setup.

any info is much appreciated,

scott

[Statica]

Welcome to the 'Mech.
You should be RMAing the drive back to wherever you got it from. That sounds like a physical error on the drive.

[sriegel]

statica,
thanks for the quick reply. is this common? i guess with the advancing technologies, hardware may become more sensitive??
i'll try to send it back, never had to do that before, should've bought it locally.

thanks again!! once this beast is up and running happily, i'll post some hardware particulars and share the experience. this is the third pc i've put together since '97, so my luck is good overall.

scott

[Statica]

Hi Scott .. yeah it's more common to have a hard drive damaged during shipping than it is for most other parts; a HDD is rather shock sensitive. Most good etailers will replace DOA drives.
Good luck getting your system working.

[sriegel]

well, i'm typing this on the new p.c., the hd seems fine
right after i posted last, i turned on the partial pc to hear the sound, nothing! so i hooked up the monitor, mouse and keyboard and started windows. took a few tries, but the computer is up and running....so far
don't know what it was, possibly a file/program error that was causing the hd to look over and over?
not sure, but i'll continue installing the rest of the components and programs.

thanks again

[jayb1234]

It might be a good idea to run the harddrive manufacturers diagnostic, just to rule out any problem with it.

[sriegel]

well, current issues are related to program opening. i loaded everything, it reboots fine, can get on the web, but once i work with a program for a bit (few minutes) any other program won't open. it's like the pc just sits idle, i can bring up the start menu, with programs, or hit hot keys and they show recognition, but the 'hourglass' goes for about 5 seconds and reverts back to the cursor.
oh, and i can't shut the computer down through windows. i thinks these may be bugs, but i'll download the diagnostics and see what that shows.

thanks so much for the feedback!

[jayb1234]

Another thing that you can check is that the CPU heatsink is on securely.

[sriegel]

ok,
i'll try that.
it appears that i have the sasser worm! never heard of it before, but the error code is the same. i'll have to deal with that as well.
amazing how fast a pc can become infected.
i only went to 3 sites!

[sriegel]

well, latest update:
decided to reinstall xp clean. so far all hardware is working well, programs are functioning and everthing seems to be working fine....
i'll feel better in about 2 weeks of stable running!
thanks again to all replies/views and i really look forward to exploring and contributing to this site, it's been by far the most helpful!

thanks,
scott