Intermittent Booting

[Tedevium]

I just put together my first build ever a few days ago and things seemed to be working fine.

P2.8c
Intel D865PERL mobo
Apacer 512 pc3200
Radeon 9800pro
For the hardrive I'm using a scavenged Toshiba MK3021GAS notebook drive but with an adapter so it'll work with the regular IDE cables in a desktop computer. (A master on the primary slot with a CDRW as slave)

Now everything worked fine for a few days. Turn on, turn off, restarts, web surfing, Played some C&C Generals... etc

But just today I shut it down to add on a second hardrive, (another notebook type w/ adapter) and it's plugged into the secondary slot.

What happens now is that I turn on the power, it will show the POST messages like RAM check and detecting keyboard/mouse. What normally happens next is the mobo gives off a beep, and the WinXP logo appears and starts loading.

Only now it will just go to a blank screen and sit there. I can hit ctrl-alt-delete to send it back to the start again in which it will go blank after the startup, or hit F12 and it says booting from network... and stop there as well.

Even when I removed the secondary IDE and go back to my original setup, it still stops after the POSTs.

It is only when I turn it off for about 6 minutes will it load up properly. Could this be a cooling problem? I don't overclock and the mobo monitor shows avg 30C idle.

 

[mechBgon]

What brand, model and wattage is your power supply? Maybe it has poor regulation and/or not enough wattage to tow the boat, so to speak.

 

[Tedevium]

400W Cyberzone Model: KC-400; it came with the $50cdn case. The strange part is it worked fine for three days.

Btw, I refered to your guide a few times when putting the damn thing together, thanks alot.

 

[L1FE]

Power supplies that come with cases generally aren't that high of quality. I would suggest you get a new power supply even if it isn't the actual problem just because I wouldn't trust generic brands with my expensive computer components. What are your jumper settings for your harddrive? Maybe you didn't have the slave/master settings correct? Either way, it's probably a power supply problem if it persists after the removal of your secondary harddrive.

 

[mechBgon]

Originally posted by: Tedevium
400W Cyberzone Model: KC-400; it came with the $50cdn case. The strange part is it worked fine for three days.

Btw, I refered to your guide a few times when putting the damn thing together, thanks alot.

Good to hear that! empowered = you. Yeah, why not grab a name-brand PSU to top it off, like L1FE said. It would give me more peace of mind, if it were mine

 

[Tedevium]

Heh, Ya I figured I would be razzled on the power supply. But my budget was limited, and I went with the 9800p so I had to cut back somewhere.

If it matters I had put both hardrives on the primary IDE plug, the XP drive as master. On the secondary plug I had the cdrw with its jumper removed (so it should be master) except in the BIOS screens, it showed up as a slave. Not sure if that makes a difference.

On that matter, whats the best way to put those things anyway?

 

[mechBgon]

Hmmm, usually to jumper an optical drive as Slave, you move the jumper over a notch to the SL pins rather than removing it, and to jumper it as Master, you leave the jumper cap on the MA pins. With the jumper cap off altogether, I don't know what they'd do. Unless this is an unusual drive.

Regarding what "layout" to use, I've preferred to put the optical drives on one cable and the hard drives on another, but some people say it's better to put one hard drive (Master) and one optical drive (Slave) on each cable instead. My work and home rigs both have two optical drives sharing one cable with no problems.

 

[Tedevium]

Hmm, one more possibility I'm thinking.

I had also just upgraded the BIOS to the motherboard the day before. Could that have had any affect?

 

[amdskip]

Dude, just upgrade that power supply already cheapy Its not worth frying your setup with a cheap power supply.