It’s looking pretty likely—honestly, I'm almost certain—that your hard drive is the culprit here. It probably has some bad sectors, especially since it shows about 25,000 hours of runtime 😁At the end of the day, just picking up a new drive should solve this once and for all.
What are you talking to me about? Well, for example, if you open an image and hit Print Screen on your keyboard, you’ve basically captured your screen—then you just open Paint, hit Ctrl+V to paste it, and save it. Another way to do it is to just find the Snipping Tool in Windows; you can crop exactly what you need there and save it to your computer. Once you've done either of those steps, just head over to Imgur to upload the file, then grab the link and drop it here on the forum, and you're all set.
I'll be honest, I don't have a ton of experience tinkering with machines this old 😁—but as a starting point, why don't you run CrystalDiskInfo? If everything shows up blue, you're golden. If you see any yellow, there's some kind of issue brewing with the drive (it should tell you exactly what), and if it hits red... well, then it's definitely time for a replacement 😁
They’re most likely talking about the SATA controller. You could try switching that setting in the BIOS to see if it helps—though, honestly, I wouldn't hold my breath. If it does change things, you’ll probably end up needing to wipe the drive and do a clean install of Windows anyway (assuming your motherboard actually supports SATA in the first place).
By the way, why don't you drop your full system specs here? It might help us get a better idea of what we're dealing with..
If you're really that skeptical about Samsung, then you might want to look into an OCZ SSD instead—though, as far as I know, that company went under and ended up being bought out by Toshiba 😁
It’s a great site for finding Windows 7 and 8—they have untouched versions with all the updates already integrated. That’s a huge timesaver, honestly, because you don't have to sit there running Windows Update for hours right after you install everything. Like I mentioned before, it’s an original Microsoft ISO file. It isn't some sketchy torrent download filled with extra bloatware or random junk programs, you know? So, it's really up to you now whether you want to go with Win 7 or 8.
If your Windows settings aren't quite dialed in, you might want to try adjusting them—just hit search, grab the download, run the installer, and you should be all set.
Model, the specific graphics card model really matters here... You should check the box the card came in—or maybe just take a look at the disc if you still have it.
Honestly, it’s all pretty much the same thing—just different packaging. If you feel better about grabbing the Kingston brand over Crucial, go ahead and take it—assuming the price difference isn't more than 10-$5.00.
Honestly, I haven't got a clue—this stuff is ten years old now. I can't seem to track it down anywhere.
Why don't you try looking for that option in the BIOS? At least that's how Google Translate phrased it, so I'm not entirely sure if it's actually right.
Do you happen to know which motherboard model you're working with? You'll want to grab the BIOS update with the highest version number available—for instance, something like BIOS version 1.90
Just click on this—once it finds the right driver for you, go ahead and download then install it. That should pretty much clear up the issue, don't you think?