What am I missing with this PC problem?

[Fat Tone]

All we have is mobo, cpu, 1 stick RAM, 1 HDD, 1*DVDRW, 1*CDRW, Wifi Card (now pulled).
Both partitions passed a Sophos virus scan when slaving the drive in another machine.

[Admiral]

Stupid question, using the latest bios for that board ?
(2.20)
And you said you've pulled the old 20GB drive out ?
I just went through trying to make an old 45gb IBM work on my A8R-MVP the other day and the system wouldn't boot into windows with it attached (no matter what channel or master/slave config), just restarted when the XP logo appeared.

edit: Also, I used to test the ram on my old VIA K8T800 Pro with memtestX86+ v1.26, while newer versions showed no errors, 1.26 did. Maybe it's more reliable for VIA chipsets.

[ZokesPro]

hehe. He does wear sandals with socks and sports a large 'tache - does that tell you anything?

OMG!!!

I'm out of ideas too. But from what I've read on other forums in regards to this problem, it very well could be the modo that's defective.

[Technoid]

Tommorow I'm going to have a look at a PC that the owner (Who thinks he's a expert) claimes so much weirdness about that I'm considdering placing a bright led light in the case

[Fat Tone]

hehe - maybe he has the same mobo as this one!

Current status: will now boot into Windows happily and run MP10 stably for at least 2 hours.

Things done:

1. disconnected optical drives from 2nd IDE channel and booted ok. Put them back and still boots ok!

Will replace the IDE cables asap just in case.

2. Updated BIOS to 2.2 - was 1.9 but nothing admitted to in the changelog seemed relevant.
3. Removed all IDE drivers in safemode and let XP redetect them.

The IDE drivers have this wierdness: The mobo has 2 SATA ports. The Device manager lists the VIA IDE controller and a Standard Dual Channel IDE controller, but no SATA controllers. There are no jumpers or BIOS options to disable SATA, just to detect drives and set SATA mode.

[Technoid]

The IDE drivers have this wierdness: The mobo has 2 SATA ports. The Device manager lists the VIA IDE controller and a Standard Dual Channel IDE controller, but no SATA controllers. There are no jumpers or BIOS options to disable SATA, just to detect drives and set SATA mode.

This is quite normal for VIA chipped mobos.

There are drivers from via that makes those apear in the device manager under proper SATA controller names.

[DJ]

I am having a similar problem with a friend's system. I partitioned the drive did a full format and the installed on the first partition. On the first reboot during setup it freezes. I then install on the second partition and everything runs smoothly. Can I assume its a bad sectors problem?

DJ

[Technoid]

I am having a similar problem with a friend's system. I partitioned the drive did a full format and the installed on the first partition. On the first reboot during setup it freezes. I then install on the second partition and everything runs smoothly. Can I assume its a bad sectors problem?

DJ

Assumption is the mother of all ****ups

BUT, I'd suspect the disk yeah

Run the testing SW from the manufactor

[VJ]

Remins me of an issue I had long ago with 2 identical Connor harddrives (420 MB). They worked flawless for 2 years as master and slave. But suddenly, they refused to work together. Each of them seperately as master worked, but when the other one was present as slave, none of them worked.

The guy at the store was stumped, and really wanted to find out the cause. And he succeeded: on those conner drives, there were a number of factory jumpers. And they were set incorrectly.


But yes, run the software from the manufacturer to test the harddisk.
(I had an IBM Ultrastar replaced because it didn't rotate stable anymore, according to tech support, which they concluded from the log that their software generated)


Jörg

[Rakido]

check if there's a cleaning lady running around pulling plugs or starting a 2500 watt vacuum cleaner ...

[Fat Tone]

hehe.

First run of the Maxtor s/w fixed some errors during the 'thorough' test. 2nd run was flawless.

I've since defragged both partitions and it is now playing in MP10 until the owner takes it away.

Anyone care to start a sweepstake on when it comes back?

[ZokesPro]

I say 36 hours from the time you give it back to him.

[DJ]

Just ran the western digital diagnostic tool. It passes the smart test, failed the quict test and the extended test found bad sectors which it claimed is repaired. Did another quick test and it fail that too. What conclusions can one draw from this?

DJ

[az]

If the bad sectors multiply: The drive is dying. Get a new one ASAP, don't touch the old drive and don't turn it on until the new one arrives, then copy all important data over from old drive to new.

[Fat Tone]

I hope I have more luck than DJ. Zokes, as the weekend is starting, it'll most likely be 8am Monday morning, or whenever I can get underneath the window he throws it out of!