can't figure out what the hell is wrong with this machine!

[wfbberzerker]

lately, my mom's computer has been freezing when it's starting up. it freezes in the bios right when it gets to "Detecting IDE devices..." and with a post code of 75, which is when the bios is detecting all the ide devices. sometimes it will hang at that screen forever, sometimes it will freeze for a few minutes and then load windows normally. in windows, the computer will sometimes randomly reboot.

i took out the hard drive (a maxtor diamondmax 40gb i believe) and put it as a slave in my rig, but the scandisk has come out normally so far, and i haven't gotten the maxtor powermax diagnostic to work (it needs a floppy to make a boot disk, i haven't got a floppy drive - anyone know a workaround for this?). however, windows detected the hard drive without any problems, and i can access the files on it just fine.

any thoughts as to what the problem may be? the only other ide devices are a lite-on dvd-rom drive and cd burner. all the components in there have been working fine for a long time, the only recent change would be the motherboard, which i replaced about 5 or 6 months ago (its now an ECS km400-m2), which has been working fine up until now.

thanks,
wfbberzerker

EDIT: someone strike me down, i'm a lifer.

 

[MagnusTheBrewer]

I did a little quick checking and found what I thought was a reasonable approach to troubleshooting this problem on the ABIT forums. Check that you have all the power leads connected to the board and that your CPU fan is connected to the correct fan header on the motherboard. If all that is good then follow this procedure:

Barebones Boot Attempt:

1. Remove the motherboard from the case and set it on a non conductive surface, such as a piece of card board.

2. Remove any non essential components required to post into BIOS. This should leave you with just a CPU, Heatsink and Fan, 1 stick of memory, and a video Card.

3. Clear your CMOS by moving the CMOS jumper to the clear position for a few minutes, you might even want to remove the battery as well. Replace the battery in its holder and replace the CMOS jumper to the normal operating position.

4. Remove your PSU from the case as well and set it on your workbench next to the motherboard. Connect the power leads to the motherboard, you should have a 20 or 24 pin connector as well as a square 4 pin connector that need to be connected.

5. Hook your keyboard up to the back of the board.

6. Turn the power switch on the back of your PSU to the on position.

7. Because you do not have your case power button to work with, your going to have to locate the two pins that your power switch would normally hook up to, this information is easily found in your motherboard manual. All you have to do is short the two pins by touching both of them at the same time with a flat blade screwdriver for just an instant. The board will start up once you short the pins.

If your board posts and your able to enter CMOS, then you most likely have one of two things going on:

1. First thing could be a shorting out issue while the board is installed in your case. The easiest way I have found to remedy this situation is to use those little red paper washers between the mounting studs and the bottom of your motherboard. You also want to make sure that you dont have any extra mounting studs installed that could be shorting out the underside of your board. Each mounting stud should have a corresponding hole in the motherboard.

2. Second possibility might be a Power supply unit that does not have the neccessary wattage or amperage output to satisfy your system with all your components hooked up. The days of "any old" power supply working in a computer are long gone, quality PSU's are a must with todays higher end systems.
Please post all the specs on your mom's computer. I hope to hear at least a little progress. Thanks and good luck

 

[wfbberzerker]

well i was able to get a copy of the maxtor diagnostic on a bootable cd and ran it, and the hard drive checked out, so i'm prety sure thats not the problem. i'll try what you said to do when i get the chance, and try to weed out any bad components one at a time.
i'm pretty sure its not a power issue, that computer was having some voltage problems before, so i had replaced the generic 300w that came with the case with a sparkle 300w (or 350, cant remember). also, the computer is always hanging at the same spot - when its detecting the IDE devices, so it leads me to think that its related to that. but, i'll give what you said a shot.

here's complete specs:
ecs km400-m2
athlon t-bird 1.33ghz
512 (2x256) pc2100 ram
maxtor 40gb
integrated video
sb live sound card
lite-on dvdrom
lite-on cd-rw

 

[jondl]

If it freezes in bios then it most likely isn't your HDs, cdroms, etc. The culprit seems to either be your ram, mobo, cpu, or psu.

 

[wfbberzerker]

without hard drive, optical drives, and sound card, the bios loads without a hitch and gets me to the "DISK BOOT FAILURE" message.

 

[jondl]

Try adding 1 by 1. It still could be your psu.

 

[JimPhelpsMI]

Hi, That's the usual symptom of a HD or CD that does not answer when the BIOS checks the ports to say "Are you there, who are you and do you have data?" It's usually because the drive did not spin up right away or it has trouble reading. I would unplug all but the boot drive and retest. Then add any other drives one at the time. You will soon find out who the bad guy is.
Good Luck, Jim

 

[Mavrick007]

If you can not track it back to her drives.. perhaps it is the IDE cables or connector port on the motherboard. I'm sure you did not use her cables when you tried the hard drive.

Try changing the cables to cables that you know are working, and if that doesn't work, you might want to try with a different hard drive (one that is working correctly) to see if it can be tracked back to the IDE port headers. The worst case scenario is that the headers are dying/dead. You can always get an IDE card instead of replacing the whole motherboard.

 

[BKLounger]

If it's freezing up at the boot the easiest ways to go about testing is take out the hard drive and just try running with a live linux disc. Also check the connectors on the power supply and make sure they are all outputting the proper wattage. Last thing to try would be is like mavrick said try buying a cheap ide controller and some ide cables and test that out.