Windows Update Killing Hard Drives??? Please Help!!!

I have a Windows XP Home PC that has the symptoms of a hard drive crash after
installing Windows updates. This is the second time in about 4 months this
has occured. The first time I wrote it off to the age of the hard drive
because the PC is about 6 years old and the drive that failed was the drive
that came in the PC. This time I am almost positive that it is related to
the update.

I did not run any updates on this computer after purchasing and installing a
new hard drive for a little over 5 months just in case it was related to the
update. Then after it ran fine for all this time I forgot about my problem
and when the update reminder came up I downloaded the updates and proceeded
with the install.

After restarting as recommended the PC comes up to an abort/retry/fail
screen, as it did the first time this happened, where the PC appears is
trying to boot off the floppy drive with no disk. On a subsequent restart it
did come up to a Windows XP screen that just said "Welcome" but froze there.
It hasn't gotten there again since that time.

When I boot with a Windows XP boot disk and try to see either of the 2 hard
drives on the system it's like neither of them are there. The XP boot disk
reports that "drive C: doesn't have a valid fat partition". It's almost like
there is a hard drive controller failure. The CD/DVD drives on the secondary
controller are still working.

When I removed the drive and put it in another PC the last time this
happened the drive was dead. I suspect the same will be true of this one but
I hesitate to put this drive in my primary PC in case there is a virus.
Before I proceeded I thought I might ask some of you kind folks if you have
any suggestions. It just seems like too much of a coincedence that both
times right after this update the primary HDD failed. By the way, I have not
used this machine on the internet except to register it when I installed XP
on the new drive and when downloading these "killer" updates, so I am pretty
sure it was virus free before downloading the updates. Also, I searched for
anything relevant on the web but haven't located anything specific to updates
killing hard drives yet.

Thanks in advance for any help you can offer!

Doug

Dell Dimension 4100 P3
1 GHz 133 Bus
1 Gig Ram
Primary HDD Maxtor Diamond Max 80 Gb 7200 RPM Purchased 5/13/06
Secondary HDD Maxtor 160 Gb

Other system details available upon request

Followup from original poster -

This hard drive indeed failed. I have sent it to Maxtor for warranty
replacement.

"doug" wrote:

> I have a Windows XP Home PC that has the symptoms of a hard drive crash after
> installing Windows updates. This is the second time in about 4 months this
> has occured. The first time I wrote it off to the age of the hard drive
> because the PC is about 6 years old and the drive that failed was the drive
> that came in the PC. This time I am almost positive that it is related to
> the update.
>
> I did not run any updates on this computer after purchasing and installing a
> new hard drive for a little over 5 months just in case it was related to the
> update. Then after it ran fine for all this time I forgot about my problem
> and when the update reminder came up I downloaded the updates and proceeded
> with the install.
>
> After restarting as recommended the PC comes up to an abort/retry/fail
> screen, as it did the first time this happened, where the PC appears is
> trying to boot off the floppy drive with no disk. On a subsequent restart it
> did come up to a Windows XP screen that just said "Welcome" but froze there.
> It hasn't gotten there again since that time.
>
> When I boot with a Windows XP boot disk and try to see either of the 2 hard
> drives on the system it's like neither of them are there. The XP boot disk
> reports that "drive C: doesn't have a valid fat partition". It's almost like
> there is a hard drive controller failure. The CD/DVD drives on the secondary
> controller are still working.
>
> When I removed the drive and put it in another PC the last time this
> happened the drive was dead. I suspect the same will be true of this one but
> I hesitate to put this drive in my primary PC in case there is a virus.
> Before I proceeded I thought I might ask some of you kind folks if you have
> any suggestions. It just seems like too much of a coincedence that both
> times right after this update the primary HDD failed. By the way, I have not
> used this machine on the internet except to register it when I installed XP
> on the new drive and when downloading these "killer" updates, so I am pretty
> sure it was virus free before downloading the updates. Also, I searched for
> anything relevant on the web but haven't located anything specific to updates
> killing hard drives yet.
>
> Thanks in advance for any help you can offer!
>
> Doug
>
> Dell Dimension 4100 P3
> 1 GHz 133 Bus
> 1 Gig Ram
> Primary HDD Maxtor Diamond Max 80 Gb 7200 RPM Purchased 5/13/06
> Secondary HDD Maxtor 160 Gb
>
> Other system details available upon request