Re: Problem with Hard Drives or Motherboard?

Thanks Gerry

there are certainly a number of things to do and as I can only work on it at
night it will take a couple of days to sort through all of this.

I agree on the repairer, he was guessing I think.

regards

"Gerry" wrote:

Daniel

I am quite sceptical about the need to replace two hard drives. I would
stay from that computer repaire in future.

Please post copies of all Error and Warning Reports appearing in the
System and Application logs in Event Viewer for the last boot. No
Information Reports please. Indicate which also appear in a previous
boot.

You can access Event Viewer by selecting Start, Control Panel,
Administrative Tools, and Event Viewer. When researching the meaning
of the error, information regarding Event ID, Source and Description
are important.

HOW TO: View and Manage Event Logs in Event Viewer in Windows XP
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/308427/en-us

Part of the Description of the error will include a link, which you
should double click for further information. You can copy using copy
and paste. Often the link will, however, say there is no further
information.
http://go.microsoft.com/fw.link/events.asp
(Please note the hyperlink above is for illustration purposes only)

A tip for posting copies of Error Reports! Run Event Viewer and double
click on the error you want to copy. In the window, which appears is a
button resembling two pages. Click the button and close Event
Viewer.Now start your message (email) and do a paste into the body of
the message. Make sure this is the first paste after exiting from
Event Viewer.




--



Hope this helps.

Gerry
~~~~
FCA
Stourport, England
Enquire, plan and execute
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~


Daniel - Sydney wrote:
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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