power supply and hard drive question ?

Mark · Post by **Mark** » Fri Oct 22, 2004 8:36 pm

i seem to be having issues with my power supply maybe.

i thought that my main drive had failed, but now the one i replaced it with is freaking out as well, i noticed that in the BIOS the 5 volt rail was about 4.40 volts, seems kinda low to me, think that can cause the drive to stop reponding ??

i just checked it with a digital volt meter from the port on the back of the PS
and it read 4.65 volts.

the power supply is an Antec 480true power that is not very old, the hard drives are WD 80GB SE drives.

it seems to be locking up at random times during software installations, like chipset drivers, it will just click and then stop responding.

i have the network cable unpluged to make sure that i don't get hacked, and all three of my other drives are unpluged, and any overclocks are set to defaults.

i did a fresh install of XP pro, followed by SP2 from their CD.

i do have another hard drive to try but don't want to fry it if this power supply is dead.

Set · Post by **Set** » Fri Oct 22, 2004 8:39 pm

Maybe the ATA ribbon is no good?

Mark · Post by **Mark** » Fri Oct 22, 2004 9:03 pm

haven't changed them, but sometimes when it does boot i get weird screen corruption, not sure how to describe it though.

and now i am getting blue screens

this is just great

some times i hate computers.........

Set · Post by **Set** » Fri Oct 22, 2004 9:18 pm

Id try switchen out Cables. then the PSU

Mark · Post by **Mark** » Fri Oct 22, 2004 10:05 pm

|i haven't switched cables yet, but am in the process of writing zeros to the drive to see what that will do.

weird that this takes like 45 minutes and the hard drive doesn't crash or make any noise, but when windows is on there it goes crazy.

Mark · Post by **Mark** » Fri Oct 22, 2004 10:51 pm

well crap, even after i zeroed the drive, i got windows installed, but when i went to install the original asus driver CD it froze up.

maybe this plextor DVD drive is bad, but it has been flawless so far.

my other option is to switch power supplies, but i really don't want to do that, to much custom wiring to mess with.

going to recheck the jumpers on the hard drive once more....

Mark · Post by **Mark** » Fri Oct 22, 2004 11:18 pm

this is a nice error on the screen, WTF ????? .........

DKin6slay3r · Post by **DKin6slay3r** » Fri Oct 22, 2004 11:20 pm

Yea I would suggest that maybe your PSU isnt suppling full voltage to all the rails. Also you may want to consider your Ram. Running Memtest86 might at least rule out that possibility. 4.40 is pretty low, but I'm not totally sold on that causing what you've explained. Memory gave me similiar problems to what your experiencing.

DKin6slay3r · Post by **DKin6slay3r** » Fri Oct 22, 2004 11:23 pm

Just seen your pic post. Might wanna recheck everything and make sure all your connections are nice and tight also. Ram,CPU,Cabling,GPU, Etc etc.

Mark · Post by **Mark** » Fri Oct 22, 2004 11:38 pm

|D|Kin6slay3r wrote:Just seen your pic post. Might wanna recheck everything and make sure all your connections are nice and tight also. Ram,CPU,Cabling,GPU, Etc etc.

good ideas, maybe tomorrow, i am just sick of this POS right to now to F with it.

thanks for the fresh ideas,

Mark · Post by **Mark** » Sat Oct 23, 2004 11:51 am

well memtest 86 has done 2 passes and no errors, will let it run a few more hours.

lansens · Post by **lansens** » Sat Oct 23, 2004 12:21 pm

Mark,

I have seen that before. It was a customers computer and some how or another she had gotten a screw wedged underneath the motherboard. I was shorting our the mb and causing all sorts of things to act crazy. You may want to check for left behind standoffs or for random loose screws.

WickedWandy · Post by **WickedWandy** » Sat Oct 23, 2004 12:24 pm

that's a pretty screen saver, wallpaper Mark. I think Lans is right, about a short in the mobo, could be you left some static discharge on it, in your fit of rage while working on it?

Mark · Post by **Mark** » Sat Oct 23, 2004 2:48 pm

well memtest found nothing wrong, i did get windows installed but after doing SP2 and then rebooting, the hard drive clicks and the system stops responding at the same place every time, right after the windows logo comes up.

guess i will try a different power supply.

i will check all the conections first, but i think i have already done that.

can't see how it could be a loose screw, it was acting up before, it just started after rebooting for some software installation.

first i am going to reformat and just try SP1 this time.