About a week ago, I started having issues with my computer's startup. It would get to the point where Windows was beginning to load, slow/stutter, and eventually freeze. After experimenting with the problem a bit and trying a number of things to get it running again, I noticed that these stutters were accompanied by a clicking noise from some device in my computer. I did a lot of plugging/unplugging, and discovered that the clicking noise was coming from the hard disk somehow.
The research I did suggested that this kind of clicking, accompanied by the inability to get the computer to boot, is indicative of a dying hard drive. I've been planning to upgrade my hard drive for a while anyway, so I went ahead and replaced it with a much nicer drive. Of course, this also means that everything on my computer is starting from ground zero; I did not attempt to copy files from my old hard drive. I've got backups I can use to restore my personal files, and at this point all I have installed on the new drive is Windows and some drivers/software for all of my hardware, as well as a few crucial programs - Firefox, Thunderbird and Trillian.
As I'm sure you've figured out by now (since I'm posting this), the startup problems have not gone away. However, they have decreased in severity quite a bit. The new hard drive seems able to push past the issue and get into Windows.
Here are some specifics about the problem...
1) It only occurs after the computer has been powered down for a while; at least 45 minutes.
2) Now that I am able to get the computer to start up, I notice significant decreases in performance if I keep it running. Restarting the computer after a glitched boot solves this problem.
3) The clicking noise does not occur at regular intervals. It seems random, ie, it could be click - 3 second pause - click click and on another startup - click - slight pause - click click click.
4) The old HDD was IDE. The new drive is S/ATA.
If anybody could tip me off to some other possible culprits I would really, really appreciate it. I'm at my wit's end with this.
Some specs - let me know if this isn't enough information.
MOBO: A7N8X Deluxe
Processor: AMD Athlon XP 2700+
Power Supply: Antec TrueBlue 380W
1GIG Kingston 512MB 3200 DDRAM
Hard Drive: 160GB Seagate Barracuda S/ATA 7200RPM
My old drive was a Maxtor 80GB IDE
