System crashes after hard disk change

Pater Alf · Post by **Pater Alf** » Sun Mar 11, 2007 12:53

Some weeks ago my hard disk crashed (there were some broken sectors on it). Now I exchanged my harddisk, made an image of all the data and the system (Windows XP).
After first problems with booting (windows wasn´t in the same partition then before) everything seemed to work fine.

But after a while the system starts to crash when I tried to open games that worked fine before ("The Great Mahjong"; "Hidden and Dangerous"; "Alien Arena"). When I click on those, system simply crashes and reboots (like using the reset button). Strangely enough this error doesn´t occour all the time, but just sometimes.
There are no problems with normal tools like "Word", "Excel", "Firefox" etc....

I tried to re-install the games that doesn´t work, but the error remained.

I can´t think of any reason for that, maybe someone can help me?

Post by **Zyx** » Sun Mar 11, 2007 17:23

This just a guess, but you could try to delete Windows' Prefetch-directory as if I remember correctly, Windows "accelerates" programs by optimizing some things. Erasing prefetch-directory makes Windows optimize them again. Maybe it makes some assumptions about harddisk then... I've no idea.

Naturally, you should back-up, even though Windows will recreate all files there.

Maz · Post by **Maz** » Mon Mar 12, 2007 8:40

This is known to be working solution: Change to Linux ^_^;
At autumn I did change my linux HDD at work. What was needed you may ask? Well, I simply mounted the new HDD, partitioned it, and COPIED old HDD's files into new one. I edited fstab file a bit, and it was good to go

With Windows? Well, Obi Van Kenobi was killed by DW, so I assume you have no hope left

(At least I do not know what could be done).

Actually, I'm sorry for this post that actually gives no help.... But surely you saw this coming?

Scythe · Post by **Scythe** » Mon Mar 12, 2007 10:04

Save everything important, reformat the HDD and reinstall everything. Not the answer you wanted, but it most likely solves your problems.

Post by **Zyx** » Mon Mar 12, 2007 10:52

If it's just games, maybe a re-install of DirectX?

Pater Alf · Post by **Pater Alf** » Mon Mar 12, 2007 15:30

I will trying to delete the "Prefetch files" and re-install DirectX first. If that fails I might re-install the whole system (even if that´s the thing I wanted to prevent by doing an image of the harddisk).

Pater Alf · Post by **Pater Alf** » Wed Mar 14, 2007 23:52

After I deleted the prefetch files everyting worked fine for the last few days. I really hope it solved the problem...

Thank you for your help, Zyx!

Post by **Zyx** » Thu Mar 15, 2007 9:00

Pater Alf · Post by **Pater Alf** » Sun Sep 02, 2007 5:11

Everything was ok for months now, but now my system crashes again everytime I start a game. When I deactivate the hardware accelaration of my graphic card everything is alright. So I think it´s a problem with my graphic card. Any other idea???

Maz · Post by **Maz** » Thu Sep 06, 2007 10:40

Try updating the graphics card's drivers??? (Just a guess

)

Pater Alf · Post by **Pater Alf** » Thu Sep 06, 2007 14:33

I tried it before and it didn´t work. But it seems to be in fact something wrong with the graphic card. I took it out of the computer, cleaned it (from all the dust) and put it back in again and now everything works fine again. Let´s wait for how long...

Post by **Chroelle** » Thu Sep 06, 2007 15:53

Maybe you need one of those computercleaning sprays? I use one whenever my computer gets dusty. And it is cooped up in a corner so that is quite often.
IT is practically just a spraycan with air in it. But it gets the job done.