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Need Some Help, IDE Problems?

P

Playmaker

Golden Member
I need some tech support with my computer. I built it roughly 2 years ago. The specs are as follows...Epox 8K7A mobo, 512MB Crucial PC2100 DDR, MSI GeForce2 Pro, 80GB WD SE, 40GB IBM Deathstar (that's luckily still running)...I have my 80GB drive as primary master and the 40GB drive as primary slave. I have my burner and dvd drives on the secondary IDE port. I just got back from being on vacation for 12 days and the only computer use that I can tell when i was gone was a family member trying to get on buy not knowing the password (WinXP) and my father taking my mouse to use on his computer and putting it back. Other than that, it could have been bumped while vacuuming because it's on the floor, but that's about it.

When I got home I turned it on and it was running fine with internet explorer but froze after 20min or so. No BSOD, just completely froze. I restarted and it was running okay again in EverQuest (a game) and then it locked up again (while I was in a bad spot in EQ if anyone out there plays heh). I restarted and this time during boot up it sat at the "Detecting IDE drives" part for about 10secs then it showed none for the primary master and slave, my 2 hard drives, but my burner and dvd drives showed up find on the secondary port. With no hard drive it tried to boot from CD. I restarted and the same thing happened. I tried restarting a few more times and occasionally the hard drives will show up and it will work, but then lock up eventually. Most of the time it acts as though there is nothing on the primary port...

Because both hard drives are not showing up it makes me think they are ok and that it's either the primary IDE cable or the motherboard, but I don't know how either could have been broken out of the blue like this. Should I try plugging the hard drives into the secondary IDE port and the CD drives in the primary and see if it works? Could it possibly be something else? Any help is appreciated...Thanks...
 
Do you have a good power supply that you can swap in as a test? I just had similar problems with one of my machines and I was going crazy trying to figure out the problem. I had video corruption, drive wonkiness, keyboard/mouse errors - you name it. I tested all the parts in another machine and everything worked. Long story short, try the power supply as one culprit because when it goes, it looks like any number of other problems.

I hope this saves you some time - I was putzing around for 2 days! 🙂
 
Power supply is an Enermax 431W Whisper. Only 2 years old so I don't think that's it. They are usually pretty solid. I will keep it in mind tho. I tried swapping IDE ports and plugged the hard drives into the secondary and the dvd and burner into primary and the dvd and burner showed up so I think it has to be the IDE cable the hard drive are on. I'll try it a few more times to make sure, but if it keeps happening I'll go buy a new IDE cable.
 
Update heh...

With the cables swapped around (hard drives in secondary and cd drives in primary) I had the slave hard drive not show up the first time I booted, but the rest of times so far it has worked. I haven't played EQ again, but it hasn't locked up in internet explorer. Could it be possible it was just loose? I went to Best Buy and the only IDE cables they have are rounded 10-inch for $22 haha. I'm building a new comp and giving this old one to my bro next week so I think I'll just put the IDE cable that comes with my new mobo into my old computer as I'll be buying rounded cables this time around anyway.

Is there any chance that this could be something else? Or does it sound at least somewhat certain it's a problem with the cable? I leave for college and I'll be gone for 3 months so I don't want the comp breaking down as no one at my house has any chance of fixing it. In fact, my dad brought our 4 year old computer in to a Computer Doctor to get reformatted because I wasn't home and no one here knew how to do it. It cost him $140 for reformatting haha...
 
More problems...

The computer was working fine for a few hours until I heard a clicking noise and it locked up again. Clicking noise can only be hard drive correct? I rebooted and the clicking started as soon as the IDE detection started and the hard drives didn't show up again. Could my master drive going bad cause the slave not to show up too? If so I'm pretty sure it has to be my master drive, the Western Digital WD600JD, and I'll have to RMA it...
 
Have you tried with just the slave drive hooked up? Does it find that drive ok?

Its definately sounding like the WD is done, have you tried their diagnostic software?
 
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