Okay, this is strange. I rebooted my computer, and on startup, just as Windows was coming up, both of my hard drives spun down. Windows was totally freaked out by this, and threw a BSOD saying it couldn't find the thread it was loading, which is pretty obvious considering the hard drives were off.

Anyway, I hit the reset button, and it happened again, but this time it happened after I'd typed in my password.

Hit reset again, and the computer boots just fine, but then my wireless card won't connect.

Reboot in safe mode, the hard drives spin down and I get a BSOD

Reboot in safe mode again, and it comes up. I didn't really do anything in safe mode since I have no clue what the problem is.

I rebooted again in normal mode, and everything works fine. I have absolutely no clue what's going on, other than maybe my drive controller is shot.

I have a Gigabyte GA-8IPE1000-G motherboard, with a 160GB Seagate Barracuda, and an 80 GB Quantum Fireball, both IDE.

The only change I'd done before booting was install a VNC client, and I'd already rebooted after installing that, and it was just fine.

PSU??
I had a similar problem, but with my optic drive. Every time it tried to read a disc, my machine would lose power and reboot. I had to disable the sucker and am now using a USB drive.
I doubt it would be VNC unless someone dialled in and did something bad...

Aha! I am having the same issue with my newly put together computer. Problem is that I dont know what is causing this and am a computer noob. I'm taking this to a computer shop soon and hopefully will get help.

Power saving options? Iirc windows also has some feature that "turns off" or at least slows down your hard drives when you are not using them.

I have my doubts about PSU not being the issue but I'm not really a computer g33k

EDIT: do the disks show ok in BIOS?

It's not the power saving thing. I have that enabled, but I don't know why they'd shut off right as I was in the middle of booting, they're being pretty heavily used right then.

They do show up just fine in BIOS, too.

Had that same issue when i was using stock hp 300w psu. Upgraded it with antec 500w psu and it was feeling like a champ

oh, BTW, I already have a 500w PSU. It's kinda old though, I might give replacing it a shot.

Quote from 96 GTS :

oh, BTW, I already have a 500w PSU. It's kinda old though, I might give replacing it a shot.

what make ? sadly just because it says its 500w doesnt mean it is

Update the motherboard (including the ide) drivers? Nothing else comes to my mind...although the updating may be a bit hard if the disks slow donw right after getting into windows... All jumpers in place? (not that they do come off by themselves...)

It still sounds almost exactly like what I had in parents computer many years ago when I had installed two ide disks in it and the 2nd storage disk was set up to slow down if not being used. Windows would freeze until the disk had speeded up if wrong shortcut/folder was clicked.

Hmm, black magic... voodoo dolls...

Quote from Hyperactive :

It still sounds almost exactly like what I had in parents computer many years ago when I had installed two ide disks in it and the 2nd storage disk was set up to slow down if not being used. Windows would freeze until the disk had speeded up if wrong shortcut/folder was clicked.

thats just a rubbish disk
i had my brand spanking new samsung set up to do this until i got not to pass its vibration on to my entire case
anyway windows only lets you set this for all hard drives and with my wds widnows was still fully responsive and functional when they were powering up from sleep (of course the dialog or dir didnt come up until the hdd was fully at speed but thats to be expected) with the samsung windows came to a standstill mouse not moving .. sound looping etc
point is dont buy samsung 250 gig drives

It's most likely power actually, the PSU came with my case, and is some off brand I've never heard of. I'll replace it and see if that fixes it. Unfortunately money isn't exactly flowing out of my ears right now :-\ Oh well, they're not too expensive I guess