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System crash

I have a serial ata pci card with two hard drives on it for storage. I am listening to Itunes and typing a paper when the whole comp freezes. I reboot and the system hangs at my SATA controller card. I reboot again, same thing. I unplug the two extra hds on the controller card and take out the controller card. boot the system and everything is fine. What might be my first attempt to find out what is wrong? Is it the controller card or one/both of the hard drives?

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simpswr

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Wooky Jack

ASKER

Ok, looking for a more quicker result without having to purchase anything yet. I'll try the card and one single hard drive at a time to see if there is a problem. I agree with you that it might be the conrtoller, but what a pain in the arse you know, spending more money...sheesh :P

simpswr

yep . . bummer . . good luck

Wooky Jack

ASKER

might not be the controller card. system just crashed again. Now i'm not sure if its video related / memory / or power supply. all these parts are less than 6 months old too. what the freck!

simpswr

Did you add any drivers or programs prior to the crashes starting?

Wooky Jack

ASKER

not for a while. I had installed a pci wireless device for the tower before which required me moving the controller card to a different slot because i got this same problem with the system hanging on startup at the controller card recognition, but I went back to hard wire ethernet and left the card where I moved it. month or two later, after this happened, I just tried moving the controller to the slot it was in before I got the pci wireless, still hangs on boot at controller.

simpswr

Look in Event Viewer to see if there are any hints about the crash . . Right click on My Computer, Manage . . Event Viewer

Wooky Jack

ASKER

I checked the properties of the time 2:34pm, a few minutes before I posted this thread, and this is what it says,
IP could not open the registry key for adapter TCPIP\Parameters\Adapters\NDISWANIP. Interfaces on this adapter will not be initialized.

Here's a screen shot.
http://i130.photobucket.com/albums/p278/thephalanx01/random/eventviewerrors.jpg

Wooky Jack

ASKER

grrr. I believe it IS the controller card. Not too happy to buy another one, but I guess I can return it if it doesn't solve the problem :/

I have dependency issues on hard drive space lol.

Wooky Jack

ASKER

Ordering off Newegg...Comp USA wants $45...helllllzzz no. Newegg $21 Here's the controller I bought.
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16815104219

QUESTION
Should I uninstall the drivers of the old controller card before installing the new card's drivers?

simpswr

yes

Wooky Jack

ASKER

I don't want to uninstall the wrong thing. How do I know which to uninstall?

Wooky Jack

ASKER

Hmmm come to think of it...Itunes was running and playing songs in which all my songs are on my hard drive which is on that controller. The computer froze and there was this long nasty sound because Itunes got stuck in the middle of the song as well. Just something I remembered that has to do with the controller card.

Wooky Jack

ASKER

Well well well, check this out my friend.

I took a look at my motherboard manual and found I have two slave drive ports for SATA hds...so I plugged my two hard drives into those and booted the system. Presto! No sata controller card needed in the first place. My mobo is an ASUS P5GV-MX for a reason! Everything is back to what it was 7 hours ago with no problems. I will see how it fairs over the next couple days.

thanks for help! looks like it will end up being the controller card's fault.

simpswr

A mazin' . . glad you figured it out!

Wooky Jack

ASKER

Thanks for your help!