Never ending busy mode; what is going on?

[frogbeastegg]

NB: I run a dual hard drive set up; primary for windows and core programs, secondary for games and frippery.

At the start of last week I was browsing the internet when my cursor turned into the 'busy' hourglass. Several minutes later it was still 'busy' and I still couldn't do anything like call up task manager, minimise my browser window, open the start menu, etc. I had to do a hard reboot. The PC then would not start up. It kept giving me an mesage about an "intel boot agent" right before the windows splash screen should have appeared. I turned the PC off, let it sit for a bit, turned it back on, and it behaved as though the hard drive didn't have windows present. I brought a new hard drive, replaced my old primary, installed windows and set the basics back up. The next day I connected up my old primary drive and recovered my important files from it. The PC was fine until today.

This morning I reconnected the secondary hard drive. Everything was ok; I wiped it and began to reinstall my games. Everything was fine until, after installing Sword of the Stars and its expansions, the PC went into busy mode again. It didn't end. Reboot required. Fortunately no damage appeared to have been done. Not longer after it went into busy mode again, and again I had to reset.

I mention Sword of the Stars by name because there's a bit of a theme and I don't want to leave out information which might help solve the problem. My PC had been running without a single issue for 2 years and 4 months, since the day I built it until several days after I first installed SotS. Then I got the busy mode which forced the new hard drive and reinstall. After the reinstall it was fine for a week, until SotS was installed.

It's probably not SotS fault but there's definitely something wrong.

The busy modes were prompted by:
1. Reading a favourite web page and doing nothing else (this is the one which required a reinstall)

2. Pressing the pause button on a download window whilst a game (SotS, coincidentally) installed. Both installer and downloader were running in tiny windows so I didn't need to minimise a window or anything at all in order to press that pause button.

3. Trying to move a single entry in my start menu while JKdefrag ran.

Virus scans come up clean.

Nothing unusual, and nothing I haven't done hundreds of times in the past without problems. I used to be able to do three or more things at once without the least hint of trouble or even slowdown.

PC specs:
Windows XP home
Intel E6600 Core2Duo
MSI Intel 975X PCI Express Motherboard
BFG GeForce 8800GTS 640MB
2GB Corsair DDR2 RAM
1 76GB raptor hard drive (my brand new primary)
1 160GB western digital caviar hard drive, about 2 1/2 years old. (the original primary was identical to this)

[caravel]

NB: I run a dual hard drive set up; primary for windows and core programs, secondary for games and frippery.

At the start of last week I was browsing the internet when my cursor turned into the 'busy' hourglass. Several minutes later it was still 'busy' and I still couldn't do anything like call up task manager, minimise my browser window, open the start menu, etc. I had to do a hard reboot. The PC then would not start up. It kept giving me an mesage about an "intel boot agent" right before the windows splash screen should have appeared. I turned the PC off, let it sit for a bit, turned it back on, and it behaved as though the hard drive didn't have windows present. I brought a new hard drive, replaced my old primary, installed windows and set the basics back up. The next day I connected up my old primary drive and recovered my important files from it. The PC was fine until today.

Yes it looks like the hard disk drive simply failed. The symptoms of the boot agent loading and the non responsiveness, hourglass etc all point to this being the case.

This morning I reconnected the secondary hard drive. Everything was ok; I wiped it and began to reinstall my games. Everything was fine until, after installing Sword of the Stars and its expansions, the PC went into busy mode again. It didn't end. Reboot required. Fortunately no damage appeared to have been done. Not longer after it went into busy mode again, and again I had to reset.

I mention Sword of the Stars by name because there's a bit of a theme and I don't want to leave out information which might help solve the problem. My PC had been running without a single issue for 2 years and 4 months, since the day I built it until several days after I first installed SotS. Then I got the busy mode which forced the new hard drive and reinstall. After the reinstall it was fine for a week, until SotS was installed.

It's probably not SotS fault but there's definitely something wrong.

The busy modes were prompted by:
1. Reading a favourite web page and doing nothing else (this is the one which required a reinstall)

2. Pressing the pause button on a download window whilst a game (SotS, coincidentally) installed. Both installer and downloader were running in tiny windows so I didn't need to minimise a window or anything at all in order to press that pause button.

3. Trying to move a single entry in my start menu while JKdefrag ran.

Virus scans come up clean.

Nothing unusual, and nothing I haven't done hundreds of times in the past without problems. I used to be able to do three or more things at once without the least hint of trouble or even slowdown.

PC specs:
Windows XP home
Intel E6600 Core2Duo
MSI Intel 975X PCI Express Motherboard
BFG GeForce 8800GTS 640MB
2GB Corsair DDR2 RAM
1 76GB raptor hard drive (my brand new primary)
1 160GB western digital caviar hard drive, about 2 1/2 years old. (the original primary was identical to this)

And so your problems began again once the secondary HDD was reconncted? I wonder do you have enough power supply wattage to run that lot?

I doubt it's the game - that's probably coincidence. Have you updated all drivers for motherboard chipset, graphics card, sound and ethernet/LAN?

[frogbeastegg]

Yes it looks like the hard disk drive simply failed. The symptoms of the boot agent loading and the non responsiveness, hourglass etc all point to this being the case.

When I connected the drive up in the secondary position it still worked and accessed ok. Some files were damaged, nothing outside of windows itself.

If I can pin it down to mechanical failure and prove it then that would be nice. It's a Western Digital Caviar model and they come with a 5 year warranty, of which I still have 2 years left.

And so your problems began again once the secondary HDD was reconncted? I wonder do you have enough power supply wattage to run that lot?

I've run this set up for over 2 years without any trouble so I can safely say it's not a power issue.

Have you updated all drivers for motherboard chipset, graphics card, sound and ethernet/LAN?

Yes.

[caravel]

When I connected the drive up in the secondary position it still worked and accessed ok. Some files were damaged, nothing outside of windows itself.

If I can pin it down to mechanical failure and prove it then that would be nice. It's a Western Digital Caviar model and they come with a 5 year warranty, of which I still have 2 years left..

I would bet on overheating. Most drives have a thermal cut out that will cause them to power down to prevent damage to the disk platens. You probably wouldn't have heard the drive powering down because a) WD drives are usually very quiet and b) you have a second drive which would drown the sound of the other one out anyway. I have had drives that failed that could be got working again for long enough to back up the data. Putting the drive in the freezer was another old trick (don't try that one).

How is your case ventilation? (Bear in mind that the weather is warmer here lately).

[frogbeastegg]

I would bet on overheating. Most drives have a thermal cut out that will cause them to power down to prevent damage to the disk platens. You probably wouldn't have heard the drive powering down because a) WD drives are usually very quiet and b) you have a second drive which would drown the sound of the other one out anyway. I have had drives that failed that could be got working again for long enough to back up the data. Putting the drive in the freezer was another old trick (don't try that one).

How is your case ventilation? (Bear in mind that the weather is warmer here lately).

Now that is a very good thought. I have a tsunami dream case which has vents at the front as well as at the back and some nice big fans and good heat dispersal overall. The weather here has been baking, the hottest it's been in several years. Yesterday I'd been using the PC for a few hours before it started playing up, and the first time I'd been writing for an entire afternoon.

I shall have a wander into the temp monitoring page in the machine's set up ...

[frogbeastegg]

The temperature checks are reporting as follows:

Motherboard: 45 degrees C
GPU: 61
The raptor HD: 36
The caviar HD: 34

[frogbeastegg]

The temperature has dropped, which means system temps have gone down by 10 degrees C or more across the board. Not had any problems today or yesterday, although I haven't used the PC much because I've been at work or doing other things.

If the problem does reoccur I shall disconnect the secondary drive again and see how it goes.