I recently began using my older PC again (roughly 6 years old with a few upgrades in the last few years) and it has been acting progressively stranger. It stopped recognizing the HDD altogether a few months ago, so I purchased a new one, assuming that the older one was simply dying. I later discovered that the primary IDE channel was no longer operating properly and solved the problem by switching the cable location. After reinstalling XP on the new HDD without a driver disc for the motherboard, the PC has been having major problems with transferring or creating new data. Nearly every file I download will not run properly, often with a "corrupt data" error message of some sort. Even files I transfer over my network, burn to a DVD, or attempt to run directly from my other PC will not run properly. I've attempted to update the drivers of the motherboard, but cannot get the file to install, most likely due to the corruption problem. The motherboard itself is only about 3 years old, while the CPU is roughly 6 and all the other major components are only between 1-3 years old. Also, Windows Update cannot run successfully.

Hello and welcome to PC Help Forum.

A little more information on your computer hardware would be good?

Did you change the IDE cable to an upto date one?

Have you installed any drivers?

Go to Microsoft and download Windows Installer.Then you should be able to get your updates.

You can get the drivver downloads from amnufacuters website or makers of your mainboard.

Specs:

Motherboard: MSI NForce 2 K7N2G
Memory: 1 GB PC3200 *autoclocking down to 2700*
Processor: AMD Athlon XP 2200+
GFX: ASUS nVidia GeForce 6600
HDD: ExcelStar 250GB (purchased mere months ago)

Thanks for the response Jelly, but I'm not sure you understood my problem. I can't download new drivers, as the files are always corrupt. Microsoft Update cannot install new packs as the downloads fail, it's not that I don't know how to do these things, it is that I can't.

When I first began having HDD problems I switched the IDE cable with the working one from the DVD drive, but I will try another one.

Installing windows installer 3.1 should allow updates to install?Have you installed this?

I would buy a new IDE ribbon a one that is ment for a HDD.