Frustrating Crashing Problem (HD? No Idea...)

Maf

I have a computer problem that is driving me up the wall, and I really hope you fine folks can help me figure it out.

I have recently been having random crashes that have no pattern to them at all. When I try to restart, one of three things happens: 1) I get a disk boot error causing me to restart. 2) I make it all the way into Windows and then instantly hard lock again causing me to restart, or 3) I start up and it is totally fine for a random amount of time (sometimes all day, sometimes for an hour, who knows.) There is absolutely no pattern or reason to these crashes that I can tell.

Yesterday, I had a win32k.sys BSOD which I am not sure is related or not. That was the first time that has happened. About a month ago I reformatted my hard drive to try to rule out any viruses or anything like that as the cause to this problem.

All of these things point me to hard drive failure I believe, but I am only moderately tech savvy, so I'm not sure if there is something I'm overlooking.

I have tried a new SATA cable with the same results, I have started up my hard drive on another machine (I only tried it once and it worked fine, but the random nature of this problem makes it so that I might just have to keep it on for a while or something), I have run a successful RAM test, and I am currently running a hard drive fitness test which seems to be going ok.

If it finishes with no problems, I'm not really sure what else it could be other than a motherboard problem possibly. I could use some help here.

My computer is currently busy so I can't check my specs, but this is what I remember and is possibly relevant:
HD: Western Digital Caviar 250GB 16 MB cache - WD2500KS
Mobo: ASUS A8N SLI Deluxe
Video: Nvidia GeForce 8800GT
RAM: 2GB Crucial

Thanks in advance!

EDIT: HD fitness test passed with no problems whatsoever. That's a little more complicated. I plugged my HD into a different SATA port on the motherboard, maybe that will help?

mightyjongyo

Have you overclocked your processor or ram or anything? Even if you haven't, you might want to try lowering the clock speed to improve stability. If this is a recent development, it's not likely that switching sata ports will help.

Maf

I'll try that next if I get another crash with this SATA port.

My CPU is an AMD Athlon 64 x2 Dual Core 4200+ which I have not overclocked or anything like that. If it turns out that is the problem, I might just replace the thing since it is a little dated by now I'd imagine.

theclam

Random crashes without BSODs points to a hardware problem. Overheating is a possibility, open the case up and blow out any dust. Your power supply or motherboard could be dying. Just because you passed RAM and hard drive tests doesn't mean that those components are definitely fine. If you have multiple sticks of RAM, try using only one at once to see if one is broken. Try booting off an Ubuntu live cd. If you can browse the internet in it for a few hours without crashing, that points to a hard drive problem.

mightyjongyo

Alternatively, if you have another computer around, try swapping sticks with the other computer.

Maf

Thanks for the tips! I'll try those out.

Just played about an hour and a half of SC2 with no problems, but we'll see if it hangs on.