Intermittent frustrations on an Acer laptop

Here is a problem I find very intriguing and extremely frustrating on an Acer Aspire 1692 laptop running XP. I apologize if the description is long, but believe me, its just a summary.

I began receiving BSOD errors a few weeks ago on my laptop (0x000000F4 (...)). Because it only happened a couple of times and because my computer was still able to reboot perform a chkdsk and start Windows properly, I didn't pay a lot of attention to them. Later, I boot my computer and it simply couldn't make it passed the Windows splash screen. It would freeze right before the logon screen. Also, it wouldn't make it into safe mode. I did all the troubleshooting I could think of, from a chkdsk to all the disk checking tools you can find on UBCD4Win, to memtest, viruses, adware, searching google with the BSOD error codes, etc. I tried a system restore from the f8 screen and a complete repair of my Windows installation without success. It simply wouldn't go passed the XP splash screen. Once in a while, it would boot and the bios wouldn't find the hard drive at all (OS not found). So I suspected my hard drive was bad even though the diagnostic tests were telling me otherwise, or some system files were corrupt.

So, I got tired of trying and bought a new hard drive and used the Acer recovery cds to get a completely new installation on a fresh drive. Here is were it gets interesting... after a few days of the new system functioning properly, I got some BSOD again (0x000000F4 (...)), and once in a while the bios wouldn't see the hard drive at all. Sometimes, Windows would tell me that the delayed writing to the disk had failed (e.g. "delayed writing has failed writing c:/$mft) before I got a BSOD. Other times, the system woudl work perfectly for several hours. So I flashed a new bios, fixed the Acer lunchapp.ocx bug, tried scanning for viruses with the latest updates, uninstalled Norton, did some more chkdsk (with /f /r), some more memtest... with no success. So if everything stayed like that, I would have to conclude that some intermittent hardware problem, for example cables, is the source of all this grief.

Here is where it gets esoteric. Before I installed the new hard drive, I put my old hard drive in an external enclosure and copied all the files on it to a spare and empty hard drive on a desktop. By the way, my old hard drive was working fine in an enclosure. I did not open or execute any file on the desktop. A few days later on that desktop (while it was idle), I see an error message "delayed writing has failed writing f:/$mft ..." f: is the drive on which I copied my old hard drive! I reboot the desktop and the BIOS couldn't find the drive! Exactly the same symptoms as on my laptop...!????

Either this last part is an amazing coincidence, or there is a software/hardware interaction I do not understand, or Sigmund Freud is making fun of me...

Please help me before I start believing in aliens!

Guillaume

 

same exact problem here but on an acer travelmate 4602WLi, it started about 10 days ago and I'm getting tired formatting it about each day. I tried also to scan with GMER because of I thougt that it could be the MBR Rootkit, but it doesn't find anything...maybe the HD controller?

I hope that someone can help us