Sporadic boot problems - STOP error

[nibor]

Hi!

This problem appeared about five weeks ago. I don't know
any changes having made. At least no HW changes.

While booting WinXP Pro sometimes windows doesn't want to
boot after choosing it in WinXP boot menu. The screen stays
black and the logo doesn't appear. Normally I can hear a
loud "click" made by my HDD and after that see the logo.
But instead the screen stays black and I've to restart (HDD
LED burns). After a restart windows can be started as
usual. To see more I activated the /SOS switch inside of
boot.ini. Now I see the black screen showing the drivers
loaded etc. followed by a screen showing some information
about CPU and memory. When the problem occurs I can see a
"blue screen" containing a STOP error (the next time I'll
notice the code) recommending me among other things to
check my drives using CHKDSK /F. I used manufacturer's
tools and no error was found on my HDDs.
Can this problem be caused by a Windows update so that
there is a conflict between windows and BIOS or whatever?

Thanks for Your help!

nibor

 

[Ben]

First, it is never a good thing to hear a loud audible
click by the HD. (this could be do to a head hitting the
platters, a head no moving right...etc) Secondly, to my
knowledge STOP errors usually occur when a piece of
hardware fails to intialize, or the OS cannot be found to
load. It sounds to me that something might be wrong with
your HD, but to be sure do the following.

1. back up all your personal files
2. fdisk and format utilities to wipe and format
the hard drive.
3. Then reload the OS.

If the problem still persists then you have a hardware
malfunction, most likely the HD. I would STRONGLY
recommend that you do a back up of you data soon, b/c
there is no telling when the HD might crash.