What piece of hardware is dying on my comp?

[MrMiyagi]

Probably a hard question to answer, but thought I'd get some suggestions.

For the past month my computer has been acting funny on startup. The BIOS comes up like it should but pauses right away usually during the memory test part (it starts to spell out "Memory te" and then pauses). It will sit there for at least 2-3 minutes, but then go into Windows XP just fine, and from what I can see its runing well otherwise.

Also during this pause the HD LED is constantly lit up, but I don't hear a lot of HD noise (then again its a Seagate so really quiet anyway).

I'm thinking, well, since it comes up during memory test it must be the memory? But, it actually doesn't always happen exactly during the mem test. I dont think its the hard drives doing anything because the BIOS pauses before it should even be looking for the HD's. Power supply possibly??? I've seen stuff kinda like this when I've added something new to a PCI slot, but that's not the case here.

I mean my comp works, but I'm afraid its not going to boot soon whenever whatever it is goes completly bad.

Thanks

P4 2.4c on an IC7
1 gig PC3200 Corsair XMS RAM
Antec 400 W PS
MSI 6800 NU

 

[Dragonbate]

First- Backup all your data if you haven't already. The next post may be your last. Now you can download and run memtest86 to rule out the memory though I'm not sure what your problem may be.

 

[techfuzz]

Disconnect all hard drives, cdrom's, extra PCI cards, anything non-essential and then start adding them back in one-by-one and booting. When it hangs up again, you'll know the last piece you added back is the faulty one more than likely.

techfuzz

 

[Alex]

yeah definitely run memtest86 off a boot floppy to make sure that ram is good...
then just enable quick boot in the bios and skip all those memory tests if it is good!

 

[Bozo Galora]

are you running a router?

 

[MrMiyagi]

Yeah, I've got a wireless router. I'll have to try some of this stuff when I get home tomorrow.

 

[mauiblue]

My computer used to hang before it would POST. It would do the memory check then hang before POST would check my drives. I would have to turn my computer off then turn it back on (somethings a few times) before it would finally POST and boot to the desktop. I ran scandisk and it removed a couple of corupt files then I ran Norton Speed Disk because my boot drive was pretty much fragmented. After all was said and done, my computer would boot up without any problems after that.

Good luck.

 

[Bozo Galora]

disconnect the router from computer - see if prob stops

te memory is traffic engineering

 

[MrMiyagi]

Originally posted by: Dragonbate
First- Backup all your data if you haven't already. The next post may be your last. Now you can download and run memtest86 to rule out the memory though I'm not sure what your problem may be.

And the winner is......

Reply #1, Dragonbate!

This morning on bootup: "non-system or disk error"

 

[Chadder007]

Originally posted by: MrMiyagi

Originally posted by: Dragonbate
First- Backup all your data if you haven't already. The next post may be your last. Now you can download and run memtest86 to rule out the memory though I'm not sure what your problem may be.

And the winner is......

Reply #1, Dragonbate!

This morning on bootup: "non-system or disk error"

Then it was your hard drive causing it to hang when it was spinning up at the time of the memory test.

 

[MrMiyagi]

Originally posted by: Chadder007

Originally posted by: MrMiyagi

Originally posted by: Dragonbate
First- Backup all your data if you haven't already. The next post may be your last. Now you can download and run memtest86 to rule out the memory though I'm not sure what your problem may be.

And the winner is......

Reply #1, Dragonbate!

This morning on bootup: "non-system or disk error"

Then it was your hard drive causing it to hang when it was spinning up at the time of the memory test.

ROFL, LMAO. I am we todd it. I never use floppies, and actually forgot I even had a drive. But...my girlfriend didn't forget...she left a disk in there last night! Hehe.

Good thing for me, but it still doesn't help my hanging on startup problem. I just need to try some of the earlier suggestions when I get time.