XP freezes at loading screen...

[DaveW]

My situation is this... I built a computer for my dad to use for work. The first day he uses it, it has problems booting. Gets stuck at the windows loading screen. From what he tells me, he also got a "Disk boot failure, insert system disk" message at one point too. I talk him through booting in safemode over the phone, and then I get him to try to boot in the last known good configuration and they both work.

I later look at it, and after some various playing around I attempt to reinstall/repair windows. After the reboot, it gets stuck before the windows loading screen. I can't get safemode or anything to work. So I say screw it, reinstall windows from scratch this time. Everything seems to be going fine, I install his programs, copy his data over, etc(all the while rebooting it to make sure it still works). Get completely done, and BAM... same issue.

All of this leads me to believe it's a hardware problem. Either PSU or harddrive. My question is this....

Everything is installed on a RAID 1 setup with 2 SATA drives. Before I try switching out the power supply, would it be possible to boot from either drive separately? I have no prior experience with RAID so I don't know how easy this is too do. Is this going to depend on my RAID drivers(onboard), or is it just as simply as disconnecting one of the drives and seeing if it boots? Also once I do this, will I have to rebuild the array? How hard is this to do with the array holding the OS?

Also concerning the PSU, I have heard on issues with using 20pin to 24pin converters. Anyone aware of any problems with this motherboard/PSU?

Am I accurate in assuming one of these is the culprit?

My specs are...
CPU AMD 64 |3700+ ATHLON 64
MB ABIT KN8 ULTRA NF4
CORSAIR D400 1GB
VGA ASUS EN6600/TD/128
POWER SP|THERMALTAKE 480W(P4)W0014RU (BK)
don't have the exact HD model on me but they are 2 sata 7200rpm 100gb(seagate or wd, not sure)

Thanks for your help.

 

[BadThad]

Everything is installed on a RAID 1 setup with 2 SATA drives. Before I try switching out the power supply, would it be possible to boot from either drive separately? I have no prior experience with RAID so I don't know how easy this is too do. Is this going to depend on my RAID drivers(onboard), or is it just as simply as disconnecting one of the drives and seeing if it boots? Also once I do this, will I have to rebuild the array? How hard is this to do with the array holding the OS?

- I don't think it's the power supply. That's not the typical symptom of a bad power supply.
- Yes, you can (or should be able to) boot from either hard drive separately, that's the whole point of RAID 1. It's that simple, just disconnect the power to one of the drives. Yes, you'll probably have to rebuild the array because I believe one of you hard drives may be bad. It's easy to do, just do it in the RAID BIOS at POST time.

I think you should download diag utility from the drive mfg and run it on each drive INDIVIDUALLY. That is, unplug one drive, run the util to check for problems, then unplug, plug in other drive and repeat.

Not saying for sure this is your problem, but this is where I'd start.