My computer has been crashing for the last 2 days. Last night I had to re format and re install xp and yet today I have been getting the blue screen of death and even a SMART error for my second hard drive. This computer run like crap for being build 9 months ago. My computer has:
1. Intel D845PEBT2 Motherboard.
2. Intel Pentium 4 w/ 2.4GHz / 533 FSB
3. Western digital 80 GB wd800jb (Special edition, 8 MB cache)
4. Maxtor 30 GB HD
5. ATI Radeon 9000/ 128mB Ram
6. 512 MB DDR 333
7. Antec tower and PS

Where did I go wrong? This thing has been a nightmare since day one. Takes 3 trys to boot. Just get a black screen the 1st too. This things driving me nuts!!!

Tomorrow I am going to strip her down to the minimum. One hard drive, one NIC ( have 3 now- used to have home network) and see how it runs after that.

That HD is a very good one, most everyone i know on my floor has some type of WD like that (myself included). Ram wouldn't run stable after 3 boots, maybe your power supply is funny? Computers with too much drain on the power supply work once you power them up a couple times to get HD'* spinning. Check all connections, something might not be hooked up right too.

Nothing wrong with the parts list, until you mentioned 3 NIC'* (potential conflicts during install). You shouldn't need SMART either, but off the top of my head I can't remember any details about that.

Install XP on your base system like you planned, and if you need the extra nic'*, put 'em back in afterwords.

SMART is the onboard diagnostics of the hard disks, if they are reporting failures then most likely your drive is failing or dead. Make sure your running antivirus and why in the world would you need 3 nics?

peer to peer to peer network (No router or hub) Hard way to do it, but cheap.

Cheap? last I checked nics were about 10-14 dollars, 8 port hubs or less than 20 if you go 10mbit. I can see 2 nics if your doing proxy or internet sharing or using a linux box as a router..but 3? I guess you could have 3 subnets on the local network but that doesnt make a whole lot of sense either...ah well to each their own...

Us geeks are wierd. If there'* a hard way to do it, especially if you already have the parts laying around

Today I took out the Maxtor Har drive, one Nic, one cd Rom, and one of the floppies. (I used to have 2 cd roms, 1 cd-rw and 1 56x, took out the 56x. , used to run 2 floppy drives too. ) Left the 80 GB WD in (WD special edition hard drive, manufactured jan. 2003, just a young pup). Cleaned the dust bunnies out and put her back together. Hooked everything up and crossed my fingers, hit the power button, and by god she booted first hit!!! Have been running her through harsh tests such as quake III all morning and she hasn't so much as burped!.

Heres some pics