This is more of a general hardware problem than a Linux problem but I am hoping that the error messages Linux is giving me will help solve the problem. Unfortunately, I'm not really sure what the messages mean.

I use both Linux and Windows on my laptop and Windows alone on my desktop. As of lately, I have been having trouble with the Windows-only desktop. It has two 60 GB Seagate drives and the one that I keep my system on seems to get corrupted ever couple weeks or so. When it boots, the BIOS do fine then I am presented with a black screen with a white underscore. Presumably the Windows boot loader is loading but not finding something it needs. Anyway, in the past, I discovered that simply resizing the system disk's only partition using QtParted on the SystemRescue 0.2.13 disc (based on Gentoo) seems to fix the problem. When the drive stopped working a week or so ago and the WinXP install CD wouldn't boot all the way (said "setup is inspecting your hardware" then the screen went black) so I couldn't use the recover console, I gave the QtParted trick a try but it didn't work. After playing around some more with various boot CD's, I tried to boot the SystemRescue disc again but got an error saying
and the Linux boot CD does not continue to boot. This, in addition to the previous problems I had been having with the drive, prompted me to buy a replacement drive. The SATA drive arrived today and I was going to try using Norton Ghost to copy the contents of the old PATA/100 drive to the new SATA/150 drive... but the Ghost boot disc also freezes at startup (presumably from the same error that caused Linux to freeze.) So, I figured I would try using SystemRescue with only the SATA drive connected just for the heck of it. Sure enough, even with the old IDE drives disconnected, I got the same error and the system freezes. The drive is brand new and not even formatted yet. I have no clue why it would be causing the system to freeze like the old one. I looked on LinuxQuestions and Google for an explaination of the "host protected area" message but didn't find one. What does that mean, why is it causing every system I've tried (Linux, Windows, and PC DOS) to freeze, and how can I fix the problem? I can't really imagine how I would fix the problem when I can't even boot the system all the way but if anyone has ideas, I would love to hear them. Oh, and I tried resetting the BIOS settings already.

-Brandon

I would begin to suspect the HD controller or the motherboard at this point (they may, of course, be integrated into a single motherboard). I have heard either/both of those problems causing wierd errors as you describe.

Do you have a separte HD controller card, or is it built-in to the motherboard (not to insult, but to tell the difference, look where you plug the data cable (the wide one). does it go to the motherboard directly, or to a card sticking up from the motherboard)?

Both the IDE and SATA controllers are integrated. Maybe this will provide me with an excuse to buy RAID controllers. No insult at all. I knew the difference but you can never really make assumptions about what people do and don't know.

I fully support execuses to upgrade equipment...

Next question: do you have a cheap IDE card handy?

The problem with integrated controllers, of course, is that it depends on how well the integrated portion dies. If it dies well, you can disable it and not use it. If it dies poorly, you cannot disable it and you must replace the whole mommyboard.

So, your options are:
a) borrow a friend's box to pop your drive into to see if it works in that context (preferred)
b) pop a cheap IDE controller in to try to see if you can eliminate the IDE controller as the problem; or
c) toss it all and buy a new motherboard or, at that point, usually, a whole new box.

IMHO, etc.