blue screen of death

This has happened to me a few times in the past 3 months.

I would leave my computer for about 30 minutes and when I get back I seen the blue screen of death

I'm running a self built computer

xp home, 2 sticks of 1 gig ram, 7950 gt, 2 sata drives, and 1 dvd rom ide.

what would happen is after this blue screen, I've figured out that by taking out the ide drive completely, my computer will boot again. if the cable stays in the mother board slot but isn't connected to anything, system won't boot.

however, even after it is removed, xp boots extremely slow. I've tried using chkdsk, which find errors, fixes them, but doesn't change the boot speed.

can someone please tell me what the problem might be?

Thanks so much in advance

 

Format, dont owrry about all that error checking if you can format it gives you the best result.

 

hmm I've already reformated twice when it happened before. and it keeps occuring.

 

Whats writen on the blue screen ? Why dont you try changing the ide cable ?

 

i kept getting that screen, it was when i installed a graphics card and because i didnt install a part of the software my pc wuldnt get to the desktop screen just loaded up and whent to the blue screen, so it could be that when your installing something then rebooting that the software or hardware wont work with your pc, i had to buy a new graphics card worked fine then.

 

Sounds like your hard disk's dodgy. Backup your data and have it replaced.