XP unexpectedly shuts down HD - rouge service or what?

**meglamaniac** · May 6th, 2002, 02:28 PM

Ok, I posted on this a while back, when I thought the problem was with the PSU in the computer. I've since tried another PSU and it still happens, so its not that.
What happens is this: one or the other of my HD's will shut down for no apparent reason, and crash the system in the process, requiring a full power off to get it working again. SeaTools (the seagate drive diagnostic) reports both as healthy, and there have been no SMART alerts.
I'm now looking a 2 options - either a software fault in XP (I'll explain that in a sec) or the ACPI chip on my board is frying...

Stuff you need to know:
Board is a K7VZA Revision 3, running the latest updated BIOS. It is a very very cheap and nasty motherboard (I needed it fast at the time and had little cash), so it may well be that the ACPI on it is dying.
HD's are both seagate, prim master is 20 gb, prim slave is 10gb.

The "software" glitch:
I've noticed a pattern. Whenever one or the other HD shuts down unexpectedly (it does randomly, it seems, and never both at once), there are 4 Application Popup events in the system section of event viewer (see top shot in attachment). The top event and the third event are the same (see bottom left shot in attachment), and the second and fourth event are the same (see bottom right shot in attachment).

What I'd like to know is this:
What is an application popup event? Because no windows pop up when this event occurs...
What is Machine Check (its not listed as a service)?
Why might it cause this odd error?
Is it possible that this "link" between the Machine Check event and the HD's may be caused by a dying ACPI chip (ie. does Machine Check call something to do with ACPI, which may then mess up a faulty ACPI chip)?
Is it wise to disable Machine Check?
If so, HOW do I disable it?

Help, before I go nuts trying to figure this whole mess out!

**eweruk** · May 6th, 2002, 02:56 PM

I cannot answer your questions stated however have you checked the event log to see what was happening before your drive shutdown? Also, do you have the hard drive set to shutdown in the Power Options?

**meglamaniac** · May 6th, 2002, 03:11 PM

You can see a brief slice of what was happening in the screenshot included.

There is nothing out of the ordinary (except those 4 App Popups) - just services comming on, going off, etc...

And HD powerdown is disabled both in the BIOS and in Windows.