At my wits end

[Twist]

For a little while now I've been having bizarre problems with my PC on boot-up, I had a crap old system I plundered and spent a little cash to end up with:

AMD 3200+ Barton 400FSB CPU
Asus A7V600-X MB (I am using the on-board sound & LAN)
1GB (2x512) Twinmos PC3200 DDR mem
Antec 480W "trueblue" PSU
Radion 9700
80GB Seagate HD (ATA100)
CD+/-RW & DVD ROM optical drives
Chenbro "Gaming Bomb" case (not as gay as it sounds, honest)

All was going well for a few months until I tried to add a 2nd HD (160GB Maxtor - ATA133) this was going to be my primary master drive with the OS (XP Pro) on it and the Seagate drive would be the primary slave for filling with MP3's ect.. (was reformatted)

This also worked ok for a bit but then my PC stopped picking up the drives on boot-up, just totally failed to detect them (didn't even show in the BIOS) and that includes the optical drives. After 15+ reboots it would eventually pick them up and everything worked ok (it would randomly detect the secondary master CD+/-RW drive on some boots but not the others) it would also be fine on a re-start, problem was only when PC had been off.

It then started locking up randomly (never in DAoC tho strangely, hated video playback and would take 1 min+ to open a media player) if I could get the taskmanager to open it always showed 100% CPU useage but would normally settle down after a few mins.

So while I was off work @ xmas I decide to sort this out, borrow some stuff from a m8, and do some diagnostics using known working kit. The memory is fine, the optical & HD's seem ok too & I have no reason to suspect the PSU is causing a problem. However as soon as I swap MB's (to ABIT NF7-S) the drive detection problems stop (guess it was IDE socket / controller related) but it locks up solid on almost every boot, when I can get XP installed again I can't download the updates as the machine just wont last that long - it's unuseable. The only 2 of my components being used are PSU + CPU.

So I get on the phone to the supplier and, fair play to them, http://www.overclockers.co.uk/ replace CPU & MB no questions asked within 1 week! The replacements turn up yesterday, I rebuild last night, and the machine promptly refuses to detect any of the drives!!

What the f*ck is going on?

 

[Deena]

Maybe im silly but did you try to get some new IDE (or SATA if you are using that) cables ?

I had about the same prob on my girlfriends computer sometimes .. it just doesnt detect one of the drives. I opened up the case and slapped the cables some and it worked again.(tried replacing them but still the same and its not the HDD either) It still does it some times but each time i just wiggle the cables and its gone.

On my own computer i had the video playback thing .. on some movies on opening my computer would just lock up. but a simple reinstall of window fixed that.

 

[Eelai]

Seems the hardware is ok, but the connection between them might not. So I think Deena's got a point

 

[Twist]

tried a number of different cables

edit: Also reinstalled XP when I could, even used a self booting LINUX instal disk to see if I could use some of the hardware teasting bits it offers - the machine locked solid with 2 mins

 

[scorge]

is the hardisk a SATA or IDe one, cant make it out from your post

 

[Twist]

is the hardisk a SATA or IDe one, cant make it out from your post

IDE

 

[scorge]

have you tried it with just one hard disk in?

 

[Twist]

Done some more work and, in defiance of all probability, it looks like the PSU is shagged (technical term). Despite the fact it worked absolutely fine with a different MB I've managed to find a replacement and everything now seems to be running ok, I can only assume the other MB was more tolerant of voltage fluctuations...

 

[Twist]

have you tried it with just one hard disk in?

yeh I had

 

[Wuntvor]

It's gonna sound stupid but............you checked the power socket at the wall is ok?.............sounds like a simelar problem to me a while ago

 

[scorge]

It's gonna sound stupid but............you checked the power socket at the wall is ok?.............sounds like a simelar problem to me a while ago

it does help if you plug the computer in mate

 

[Twist]

it does help if you plug the computer in mate

We did actually have a guy at work who called out a technician cos his PC kept suddenly turning off at random times during the week for no reason, turned out the bloke on the other side of the partition was unplugging the powerbar so he could plugin his laptop charger when he was in the office

Anyhoo it's deffinitely the PSU so back to Overclockers it goes