Hmm, messing up again. No problems in the device manager. Trying to reinstall the SATA drivers sounds like a good idea, though. I shall try it out!

Thanks again for the help.

Thanks for the replies (even though I must look like an idiot misspelling "Shuts" in my title)!

Once I get into Windows, it is stable for the most part. Certain games freeze and the computer itself freezes sometimesbut the main thing that concerns me is that when I install different programs, the screen will go black and have a blinking square in the top left-hand corner. For instance, it was happening today when I repaired my XP installation.

As for the hard drives, they are both SATA. I actually unplugged my second one after I ran some Memtests and after I repaired my XP installation. The computer seems to be booting alright now, but it did the same thing when I tried to fix it in January. After a few days it starts to act up again- hopefully this time is different!

I'll keep this up to date. If anybody has any more suggestions I would be very glad to hear them. Everything helps!

Hi-
I built my computer about 3 years ago, and over the years I have upgraded most of it. About a year ago, I bought a new Western Digital HDD to complinent my current 80 gig WD HDD. However, ever since then, it takes me about 3-4 tries to trun my computer on: it gets to the Windows XP screen and then just shuts off.

What can be causing this? I figured it's probably the new HDD, so I reformatted everything to start all over again. I reinstalled Windows, did all of that, but it's still happening. I even unplugged that HDD and tried booting, but it still shut off. Another reason that I think that it may be my HDD is because when I first installed it it was shutting down the computer, but I put one of those little plastic things on the pins (sorry, the exact name escapes me) to slow the speed and it worked. I found out later, however, that I shouldn't have done that, so I took it off.

I was doing some reasearch online and a lot of threads said that it could be the PSU, but I don't feel that it is: this is my second PSU and I bought a pretty good one (at least review-wise) compared to my first. Of course, there's always the possibilty that it is the PSU.

Any help would be appreciated. It may also help to know that I have never overclocked anything. Here are my specs:

AMD Athlon 64 X2 6000+ 3 GHz
GIGABYTE AM2 Motherboard (GA-M55SLI-S4)
2 GB Patriot Memory
eVga Nvidia GeForce 8800GTS KO
Creative X-Fi Xtreme Gamer Sound Card
80 GB Western Digital Caviar HDD
320 GB Western Digital Caviar HDD 300 MB/s
Coarsair HX520W PSU (CMPSU-520HX)

Please help!

Yarghh- it just happened again. My theory is that, because I am running the two hard drives on the same power cable, maybe that is what is causing the problem? Any feedback would be appreciated (again).

Hi-

Today, I bought a new Western Digital Caviar 320GB hard drive (the SATA version). I put it into my computer to run along my previous 80GB WD Caviar. Everything went well until I formatted the new drive. Now, it just shuts off randomly. The first time was when I was copying files, and the second was when I was installing Unreal Tournament III. What is causing this? My only thought was my PSU, but thatis a 520 watt Corsair that has been more than enough for my needs. For the record, my other specs are an 8800 GTS, an AMD 6000+, 2 gigs of Patriot RAM, an Xtremegamer Sound Card,and a Gigabyte motherboard. The computer has worked perfectly until now, so any help on getting it fixed would be greatly appreciated.