Original Post
I''ve been building my own comp for the past few days, and it has been a nightmare. I''ve built machines before and never with so much trouble.
First thing that happened was I got all my components from the store, assembled the machine, was 100% sure all the connections were right. Plug everything in, hit the power button, and ... absolutely nothing. Just sits there. After a lot of messing around including taking a power supply from another comp and plugging it into my new components (and getting everything working) I decided that the power supply I had gotten (a cheap generic one) was bad.
Trade in the power supply at the store (they were real nice about it) and get my comp working. Installed Windows 2000, and began to install other software when all of a sudden I restart and bam! C:\WINNT\boot.ini is missing or corrupted. Well crap. So I attempt a repair installation, which doesn''t work, even though in the boot.ini missing error message that''s what it says to do!
So I repartition and attempt to reformat the drive, and now it hangs at 12%, then gives me the error "Cannot write FAT, Format terminated." I run all these special Maxtor (the brand of my HDD) formatting utilities on my hard drive, and they all hang at the exact same spot, after having to wade through megs of bad clusters.
So I decided to attempt a low-level format. I get a low-level formatter from Maxtor''s site, but it can''t find my HDD! My BIOS sees the HDD, and when I use an old Win98 boot disk it sees the HDD, but the low-level formatter doesn''t!
Now, right after I try to do a (failed) format, my BIOS won''t recognize that my hard drive exists until I shut down, and unplug and then plug back in the power cable. I mean, WTF is with that?
Well anyways, I am going to return the HDD tomorrow, and hope they don''t get too concerned that I keep coming back with failed components. LOL, I can just imagine them asking me questions like, "Are you sure the IDE cable is in upside down?"
*Sigh*, oh well, just wanted to vent, and since we are all geeks here I figured I would ask you if any of you have had tons of problems with newly purchased hardware in the past, or whether for some reason I have angered the component failure gods or something. And is there any chance my hard drive isn''t severely fubarred and there is a way to fix it?
