Author Topic: Completely bizzare problem (Read 626 times)

Soulyss · « **on:** October 07, 2004, 10:25:45 AM »

Mornin' gents I've had a really stragen problem for about a week now. I lots been going on with this so bear with me and I'll go through everything. I'm a work so I can't post DxDiag or anything like that (I ran it and it came up clean but maybe someone can see somthing in there that I can't when I post it.)

At it's most basic when I run AH2 my computer resets.

Now for story time....

this started about a week ago and rapidly degenerated to the point that my computer wouldn't boot at all. It began randomly resetting itself then one time it just failed to boot at all. Brought the puter in to my work where I have buddy who knows leaps and bounds more than I do and he sat down decided that the 2 hard drives I had in there weren't playing nice with each other. We checked the jumper settings and sure enough I was lazy when I installed the 2nd driver and I set #2 to slave but #1 was on cable select, we set it to master, and voila the computer booted just fine.
BUT I couldn't run anything off drive #2 G:
which incidently is all my games.... including AH2... but I could run AH2 off my primary HD C: now here is where it gets wierd. For 3 nights in a row now I've fiddled with settings and such and gotten AH2 to load succesfully. And every time the next day when I go back to it the problem returns. And every night I change somthing DIFFERENT and get AH working... only to have the problem return the next day.

A couple interesting tidbits. The computer resets allmost every time as soon as I get into the MA, I see the tower, the squad MOTD appears a few seconds later I get dumped. Now last night after some fiddling I tried loading it up offline and it loaded ok
I quit back to the main menu in AH clicked online then MA and got booted. Loaded it back up after reset went offline... fine... went to the SEA which was empty.... fine.... went to MA also fine..... so then I powered down waited a few minutes and powered back up headed for the MA and it worked! So I went to bed... checked this morning and I didn't even get to the main menu before my computer was halfwar through the reboot cycle.

I've done all the maintenence things I can think of, updated drivers, updated and ran virus scanner.... there weren't any major system changes prior to the symptoms appearing. I know this is a long post, thanks for taking the time to read it, I'm at my wits end any advice or thoughts are appreciated.

Skuzzy · « **Reply #1 on:** October 07, 2004, 10:33:52 AM »

Power Supply? Sounds like it may be going bad.

llama · « **Reply #2 on:** October 07, 2004, 01:11:50 PM »

I know you say it won't boot, but that can mean a lot of different things. You mean that it doesn't POST and display boot info on the monitor? You mean that windows hangs up during booting? You mean that you get a desktop that's blank and the system never becomes responsive?

If indeed it won't POST, then it is a hardware related problem. If the boot hangs up later in the process, then it could be something else.

Let's get some more info from you, and see what we can turn up.

-Llama

Soulyss · « **Reply #3 on:** October 07, 2004, 02:09:20 PM »

At this point it will boot completely and I can run anything seemingly on the primary (boot) hard drive. AH2 which is installed to HD #2 will not run and causes the computer to reset (like someone hit the reset switch on the front of the computer) If I put AH2 on the C: (primary) it runs fine.

When I was having problems with it booting at all.. what would happen was the fans would spin up and there would be a long pause, then I could hear the HD (primary) spin up I'd get the Intel Inside blue splash screen followed by a prompt and Boot Failure message. The problem was seemingly solved when I got the jupmers set correctly, now the problem seems to be localized to the 2nd HD

Blooz · « **Reply #4 on:** October 07, 2004, 03:12:56 PM »

Is the data cable right? The pin 1 line (the colored line on the cable) actually lined up on pin 1 on the HD connection?

Look for bent pins at each end on the cable too.

Check that the HD mounting screws aren't too tight. These should just be snug.

Is the 2nd HD formatted and partitioned correctly? Should be able to check this in Computer Management window.

System files correct? Drop your Windows disk in the drive and run sfc.exe \scannow

All I can think of at the moment.

llama · « **Reply #5 on:** October 07, 2004, 05:16:02 PM »

OK, this pretty clearly sounds like a problem relating to the IDE chain. Ah, but what?

Without laying hands on the system, my gut reaction is failing hard drive, and hey, it happens all the time (we just had a discussion about this over in the Hardware and Software forum). My Gut Reaction here is that the failing hard drive, while Slave, was sending spurrious signals to the mainboard regarding ALL the hard drives on that chain. The BIOS, unable to figure out the status and existance of bootable hard drives, threw up that error message.

Now, if I COULD lay hands on it, I would start moving that drive around and see what happened. Take off the CD Rom drives, put that "bad" drive on the secondary IDE chain and make it the drive "primary" or "single." Set the BIOS to auto-detect the drives. reboot.

Then look in the BIOS again. Are the devices on the secondary chain "unknown" or "unrecognised?" Bingo! That drive is the problem.

Maybe the IDE controller chips on the mainboard are failing. This is rare, but I;ve seen it. Adding a PCI IDE card (I like products from the comany "Promise") solved the problem.

Anyway, start shifting that drive around (even installing it in other computers) and see if the problems follow it.

-Llama

Soulyss · « **Reply #6 on:** October 07, 2004, 09:47:32 PM »

update I tried the sfc.exe and after it did it's thing the computer rebooted and the drive letter had changed... and AH ran a-ok. Of course I've made it this far before so I suppose tomorrow will be the real test but either way I'd like to tank those who took the time to try and help me out. If it doesn't take you an be sure I'll back.

Soulyss · « **Reply #7 on:** October 08, 2004, 09:11:20 AM »

Well AH2 ran fine last night... I even powered down the computer for 30 mins or so and it still ran fine. Now this morning... same 'ol story load AH2, get the the tower in the MA and reset. Guess I'll start playing with the IDE chain this weekend and see if that gets me anywhere.

Blooz · « **Reply #8 on:** October 08, 2004, 11:05:16 AM »

It's power supply then.

When your computer goes to access the #2 HD for the AH files the added power drain is causing your computer to reboot as if you pushed the reset button.

In the words of Tim "The Tool Man" Taylor

More Power!

Soulyss · « **Reply #9 on:** October 08, 2004, 12:31:07 PM »

A co-worker is going to lend me a power supply today so we'll try that. I'll also try moving the IDE's around and see if I can isolate the problem this weekend. Thanks again guys I'll keep posting updates as things happen.

Soulyss · « **Reply #10 on:** October 13, 2004, 02:57:08 PM »

I'm starting to think it's the HD... XP won't even recognize that a drive is plugged in anymore, though it does appear in the BIOS.

TrueKill · « **Reply #11 on:** October 13, 2004, 03:47:20 PM »

soulyss its the MA its an evil place stay outa it just stick with the CT

hope u get it fixed

Soulyss · « **Reply #12 on:** October 13, 2004, 11:22:07 PM »

lol..... thanks Truekill
Got a new power supply in tonight and we're running fine off HD1 gonna start adding components and see what happens I suppose.

Soulyss · « **Reply #13 on:** October 13, 2004, 11:45:49 PM »

Ok the questionable HD is officially kaput. It's now making noises that no functioning HD should be making. (sounded like it was failing to mount) I still don't know if there was/is anything else going on that shouldn't be but I'm going to go get a new HD and with the new power supply I'm gonna keep my fingers crossed.

eskimo2 · « **Reply #14 on:** October 14, 2004, 12:10:21 AM »

This sounds a lot like what happened to my system when my power supply started going south. A new one fixed everything.

eskimo