Re: Problem with Hard Drives or Motherboard?
- From: Daniel - Sydney <DanielSydney@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Sun, 5 Aug 2007 14:28:01 -0700
Anna and Rich
thanks you for your comprehensive replies, I will start by cleaning out the
PC, although it get's a clean every year, and make sure everything is seated
properly, I will then have a look at the disks in DOS, I have a basic boot
disk with a lot of stuff on it including Fdisk, if the problem comes up
indicating it is hardware, I will look at the hardware starting with the
Graphics card.
Then I will look at everything else in your replies.
I'll let you know and thanks again.
regards
"Anna" wrote:
.
"Daniel - Sydney" <DanielSydney@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote in message
news:71E11327-8351-4D2E-927A-438693A96D4F@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Hi
I am using XP Pro,
I have two Hard Drives, and both have been replaced because
the repair people said first that the second was gone, then when
the PC failed to boot when I got it home I was told the problem was
the first (C:) drive, which was then replaced.
The PC still boots only intermittently, going through a BOD then reboot
cycle,
if I turn it off and try again it some times boots, sometimes not.
Both new hard drives pass the Seagate DOS hard drive short and long test,
and I have tried a repair install on one of the few occasions that the PC
booted up,
that seemed to fix the problem but after my next shut down it was back to
problems.
I am now told it must be the motherboard.
How do I test the motherboard, can it be done in DOS or in the BIOS?
Any ideas on what else I should look at, this is a brilliant 6 yr old PC
with 784 Meg of Rambus, which performs as well as my other new PC with
DDR2.
All help and advice will be appreciated and followed up.
regards
Daniel:
It's a problem all right. We'll of course assume that your HDDs are
non-defective and that the OS has been properly installed. You're certain
the OS was properly installed and your HDDs (both the boot drive *and* the
secondary HDD have been properly connected/configured, right?)
I just can't believe it's the RAM. Working with a good deal of RDRAM over
the years we've never encountered another type of RAM as rock-stable as
Rambus. I'm hard-pressed to think of a single instance of that type of RAM
becoming defective *after* an initial successful install. It just seems to
go on forever. But that's ancient history of course since Rambus has long
since left the consumer market. Still, if it *was* defective RAM that was
causing your problem that would be the end of this story. Your only
practical alternative (it would seem to me) would be to come away with your
two new HDDs after jettisoning the rest and build yourself or have built
another machine.
Anyway...
It could be your motherboard. You say "I am now told it must be the
motherboard." Who told you this - the repair shop? If so, do you have any
idea as to whether they tested the MB? Or was this "conversation talk"? You
are, of course, dealing with a pretty old machine. Unfortunately, the only
practical way to tell if this is so by the end-user is to replace the MB
with a working one. I'm assuming here that you previously made no hardware
changes/modifications prior to this problem arising.
It could also be a defective power supply or even a defective graphics card.
That's the problem with the kind of problem you're describing which we're
assuming is hardware-based. Any major component in the machine could be the
culprit. And once again, the only definitive way to tell is to substitute
known working ones for potentially defective ones.
But try this in the meantime...
I assume your machine has a floppy disk drive and you have a DOS boot disk -
maybe one of the Win9x or Me startup floppy disks. Connect only your boot
drive (not your secondary HDD) and boot to the DOS floppy disk. Also
disconnect any optical drives or any other storage devices of any kind. Play
around with the FDISK command (I assume you know your way about this) -
without, of course, actually modifying the partition on your HDD, and do
this for a while, e.g., check the partition information, etc. See if you run
into the same problem you've been having re the rebooting/shutting down
cycles. I assume the same problem will occur. If it does, this would tend to
indicate that the problem is definitely hardware-based. It's always wise to
determine this at the outset.
But, of course, you'll still have the problem of determining which of the
PC's components is the one causing the problem. Again, I really don't know
of any practical way for the end-user to determine this except by
substituting components on a one-by-one basis.
Anna
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