off topic: hardware advice

[Kirk Wood]

I would have to disagree with Greg about unusual noises being the only
indicator of a bad hard drive. While they often do make such noises, I
have seen many go out without making such noises.

Unfortunately, with most winblows screen readers you will have little to
go on for troubleshooting. The problem could be a bad cluster, or a corupt
file. It may just be a bad controller which incidently resides on the
drive. (This is something many don't realize.) I have supported computers
now for more then 5 years and have only seen the motherboard go out a few
times. I would only believe it is a problem on the motherboard after
exhausting all other possibilities.

As for your shut down problems they could easily be related to the
drive. Or they could be related to a network driver. There are some
patches that can be applied to make the shut down more likely to
happen. If you read what changed it is more then likely m$ added some wait
time for something to shut down. They seem unconcerned with actually
fixing the problem.

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Kirk Wood
Cpt.Kirk at 1tree.net

The mind is like a parachute; it works much better when open.
If your too open minded, your brains will fall out.