Sudden crashing; no BSOD

It's all OEM. I haven't installed any new hardware.

I've thought about this some more. It doesn't really seem like the hard drive itself is failing, only that some important files are in bad spots on the drive. Shouldn't it be possible to work around this somehow? Maybe boot from a CD or use this drive as a data-only drive? Something?

Also, even though I was clearly having problems, it didn't become unbootable until I ran Scandisk. Why should that be?

Update: Since the hard drive failed both Seagate's SeaTools "short test" and HP's own diagnostic tools, I have contacted HP for a replacement unit, as it's still under warranty. I ought to have this within the next few days.

However, I am still not fully convinced that the problem is solely with the hard drive. I would like to reiterate comments that I've made previously about what prompts the crashing. In every case to this point, one of the following is being done: playing a game (Civ4 and Galactrix), watching YouTube, or running iTunes visualizer and browsing with Google Chrome.

After the last post by mgorman, I started up the PC with the intent of running chkdsk a couple more times. However, it started up completely with no problems and has been running fine for the last two days, so I didn't want to rock the boat. This morning, though, I was watching a YouTube video -- more or less as a test. At exactly 9 minutes 15 seconds, the computer stuttered to a stop and crashed.

I haven't mentioned it before in this thread, but I've noticed this 9 minute interval with previous crashes. That is to say, after about 9 minutes of one of the causes listed above (game, YouTube, iTunes+Chrome), the computer crashes. My concern is that this is not the hard drive, but some other component, such as the video card.

After the latest crash, I tried restarting the computer numerous times; each time it crashed before getting to the desktop. I let it sit for ~40 minutes . . . and it started up fine.

I did generate a couple of BSOD through all of this, so I've uploaded another report.

However, with my new HDD due to arrive today, I'd like to know if or how I should go about testing my video card.

Whatever the ultimate problem with this machine is, the hard drive is not it (or at least, not primarily it).

I installed the new hard drive and began installing Windows with the restore discs. A few minutes in, I had to leave the room; when I came back, it had crashed. Clearly something is out of order.

I let the machine sit for about a half hour, then tried installing again. This time, I documented each stage of the process, noting the time. It was taking about five minutes between disc changes, and the installation went a lot farther than it had the first time, so I thought maybe I was imagining things. Then, 85% of the way into installation of programs -- crash.

The install disc was ejected at 5:04:48. The computer crashed at 5:14:00.

Nine minutes, twelve seconds.

So this is the common theme. The tasks I listed above all crashed a little over 9 minutes in.

What in the world?

The hard drive tested as going bad, so maybe it is, too. But I agree that the underlying problem is something else.

I haven't tried doing anything more exotic with the RAM than running each of them individually through Memtest and then as a group.

The power supply is HP model 460DB-3, if that means anything to you. As I mentioned earlier, though, I haven't installed any new hardware on this machine at all; it's about 17 months old and I don't really put it through its paces much.

When I tried the install on the new drive, I had it configured as recommended.

Worth pointing out again that I ran each of the Prime95 tests, maxing out the quad-core CPU with no problems.

The repeatable triggers are 9 minutes of activity in one of the following areas: YouTube videos, computer games (specifically Civilization IV and Puzzle Quest: Galactrix), iTunes with visualizer while browsing Google Chrome, and doing a restore on a different hard drive.

None of this ought to be too taxing for my machine. And it can run with no problems at all as long as I keep my activities relatively light: word processing, surfing the Internet, downloading podcasts with iTunes, running an old WYSIWYG editor.