Controller or Hard Drive failing?

We've had this problem for a while but now it's occuring more often.

The problem is on our 5 1/4 year old gateway. The system is an 950Mhz AMD Athlon with 640mb's or ram.

The hard drive is a WD 40GB Caviar 7200rpm 2mb cache. The motherboard is based on the VIA KT133(a?).

Now almost everytime I turn on the computer, it goes to the last boot device which is the net card. I have to power it off then turn it on, then it will boot from the hard drive.

Everyonce in a while it will blue screen, it used to be about every month and a half. Now it is like every 2 weeks. In January, for no reason at all I turned on the computer one day and it acted like it was the first time I had logged in under our user (xp was last installed in may of 2004) with the reset desktop. Had to redo all the icons and outlook for got it's profile; just like if I had just installed xp and was setting it up. It has also corrupted Quicken b/c it bluescreened which we were using Quicken.

It sometimes, but rarely, blue screens when I begin copying something to the hard drive from the network, or when I uninstall/install something.

I went into Event Viewer and I have gotten these errors periodically:

Event Type: Error
Event Source: Disk
Event Category: None
Event ID: 11
Date: 2/11/2006
Time: 5:20:02 PM
User: N/A
Computer: GATEWAY
Description:
The driver detected a controller error on \Device\Harddisk0\D. (happened 4 times at the same time in this instance)


Event Type: Error
Event Source: Ntfs
Event Category: Disk
Event ID: 55
Date: 2/4/2006
Time: 11:38:51 AM
User: N/A
Computer: GATEWAY
Description:
The file system structure on the disk is corrupt and unusable. Please run the chkdsk utility on the volume C:.

Event Type: Warning
Event Source: Disk
Event Category: None
Event ID: 51
Date: 2/4/2006
Time: 11:33:46 AM
User: N/A
Computer: GATEWAY
Description:
An error was detected on device \Device\Harddisk0\D during a paging operation.

Event Type: Error
Event Source: atapi
Event Category: None
Event ID: 9
Date: 2/3/2006
Time: 6:40:40 PM
User: N/A
Computer: GATEWAY
Description:
The device, \Device\Ide\IdePort0, did not respond within the timeout period.

Event Type: Error
Event Source: System Error
Event Category: (102)
Event ID: 1003
Date: 2/4/2006
Time: 11:40:01 AM
User: N/A
Computer: GATEWAY
Description:
Error code 0000007a, parameter1 c03e2a4c, parameter2 c000000e, parameter3 f8a93a43, parameter4 218ff860.
(this one is from the blue screens)

The paging file one happens almost every day, even though I wont notice until I look in Event Viewer.

Most of the time error's with the id's (look above) occur in this order at one time: 11, 9, 51; or they usually happen on the same windows session at varying times.

With the exception of that one blue screen error (above) that said I had to run chkdsk because it was corrupted ( Which it did fix a lot of files during the scan), there usually has been NOTHING wrong when I run it other times. The is the same with scan disk and chkdsk /f or /r.

I have also downloaded the WD Data Lifeguard and Diagnostics. Running these on the extended test have found NO errors. I also tried it with the DOS version also with the same results.

I think the controller on the mobo is going and I want to know what you guys think. If that is the case then I am going to buy a pci ide controller to fix the problem.

Thanks (Sorry for the very long post)

 

I will do that here soon. Also, on another board someone suggested replacing the battery. I doubt that will fix anything but what do you think?

Thanks

 

Ok, I updated the drivers to the newest ones on VIA's site. So far no errors in event viewer, but I'll keep you posted.

 

It didn't fix the boot up problem, with it going to the net card boot. It is like the controller or hard drive doesnt "wake-up" fast enough cause it will boot correctly after I restart with ctrl alt del.

 

The hard drive is 1 floppy 2 cd 3 net card 4.

I had the hard drive as 2 and it did the same stuff.

It doesn't do it everytime, but more the 50% of the time it does.

I haven't had the computer on long enough to see if the other errors occur yet so I'll still have to let you know about that.

 

Turks, the suggestion on some other board about changing the battery seems to be valid. Change the battery.

 

I somehow just discovered that I could disable boot devices so I disabled the net boot and put the hard drive as 3. But now instaed of going to the net boot it will now just go to a blinking cursor. It will only boot when I reset it.

rsinfo, since you agree about changing the battery I will.

I am also going to try to use the school's disk duper and dupe this har drive to a newer one that I know works and see if it fixes the boot and/or other windows problems.

By the way I have not recieved any errors in event viewer yet so the driver update did something, I think.

 

Yesterday I got the new battery and put it in. Well I am glad to say that it has booted correctly so far. Hopefully the problems are solved. Thaks to everyone for their support.

 

Good. Long live the battery.