Windows hears me knockin' but I can't get in

[Dmachine]

Yup. Thumb drives laying all over. I believe I can select a USB drive under "removable" in the BIOS but I'll double check the next time I can get into it. Haven't had time to open up the case today. I would like to pop out the CMOS battery to reset things.

 

[robisbell]

okay, let me know if you can. can you move the stuff on the other partition to another drive? I want to use something other than the XP cd to wipe out the partitions and then let xp redo them.

 

[Dmachine]

Popped the CMOC battery and got into BIOS. It just refers to "Removable" in boot order, doesn't specify floppy so I think USB should work. I do have an external USB drive that I use for back-ups. And if I had backed up before...never mind. Meantime, after resetting all the BIOS parameters I tried to boot into the RAID utility with F8. No go. Would not POST the second time. I'm strongly suspecting the battery and or the BIOS chip.

 

[robisbell]

crap. did you enable the raid function in bios first?

 

[Dmachine]

Yeah RAID is enabled. I think I may see about getting a replacement chip from Asus. Thanks again for all your suggestions.

 

[robisbell]

it's going to cost as much if not more than a new board.

 

[Old Hippie]

I don't know what Asus charges, but Biosman is @ $30.00 for a new one.

 

[robisbell]

well, I did not think they were still in business. you can try it but I thinks physically the board.

 

[Dmachine]

I'll look into Biosman, thanks. I do agree that things don't look good. I tried to get into the BIOS this morning. No joy. Hoping the board isn't fried. We'll see.

 

[Dmachine]

Anyway....Based on what I've unplugged and replugged, the motherboard is toast. I would really like to build a new system but can't really afford it right now so I'm just going to grab a cheap socket 939 mobo and put Humpty Dumpty back together again. Hoping I don't have any issues with the new board and the old RAID array.

 

[robisbell]

you can try seeing if anyone sells that same model board.

 

[Dmachine]

I guess in dog years that ASUS board is 14-21 years old. Looked on NewEgg and ordered a Foxconn with the 939 socket. So at least if I can't resurrect the RAID stripe I won't have to spend any more money on a processor or RAM. Of course I'm ASS-uming those things aren't toast as well. I don't want to throw any more money down the well.

 

[robisbell]

well, I know I am keeping my fingers crossed for you.

 

[Dmachine]

Update. Got the board from NewEgg and finally got everything installed and plugged in. Success! Had to repair the Windows installation but no big deal there, since I had the OS and the programs and other files on a separate partition. The Foxconn is a very simple, nicely laid out board and everything was easy to get to. It was a great opportunity to rethink the case cable management and I also got to use a giant Thermalright heat pipe heatsink with a 120mm fan which I had previously but couldn't make work with the old Asus board. On the down side I did notice two fans were dead. One was the rear 80mm case fan. the other, unfortunately is the exhaust fan on my Antec power supply. I had a Panaflo set aside in my parts bin to replace the rear case fan but I have no solution to the power supply problem. The front fan is working and I can feel air being pushed out the back, so I guess I'll just nurse it along for awhile. No more dough for this rig. First thing I did was to copy all the files I need and now whatever happens, happens. Thanks for all your ideas.

 

[robisbell]

the psu fan needs to be running or the psu will burn up, literally. I mean flames.

 

[Dmachine]

It has one fan on the front of the unit, which is working, and one at the back on the rear of the case which is not. No problems right now because I only have the rig on when I'm copying something from it but I suppose I will have to go shopping and spring for a new one...ugh.

 

[robisbell]

well, it means the PSU is cooking itself, and can end up shorting out and wiping out all the hardware in your case.

motherboard,cpu,ram,hard drives,optical drives,video card, and anything else plugged into the case.

 

[Dmachine]

Visiting relatives over the weekend, got a new PSU. Didn't realize until I got it home (300 miles) that it wasn't fully sleeved. Aarghh! Then of course endured an hour or so of head scratching after I installed it because the system wouldn't boot. Helps to plug in the extra 12 volt connector on the MOBO. Good reason not to do these things when tired. Anyway, all fans running. Nice and cool. Now back to lurking mode.