Darn things and darn me! First let me say I'm not a super computer guy. If so I would have completed this in about 15 minutes instead of about a week.
Last Wednesday I turned the computer on and there was a whirring noise. It got louder and seemed to start vibrating a bit. Something is wrong there. I listen carefully to the noise and it seemed to be coming from the CPU fan. I mean it had to be right since that is a critical element. It's always the critical element. I quickly turn off the PC to keep it from overheating and start looking around the house for an extra fan. I know I had one because I used an aftermarket fan when I built it. Now I know building a computer sounds impressive but it's just like Legos, only you get to turn it on when you're done. Well I can't find it. Must have given it to my son. Nothing like wasting a couple of hours looking for something not there. I was under some pressure since I was asked to apply to two different positions as fast as possible.
Then I run to a local computer retailer and pick up a fan. It's a pushpin contraption. You literally push pins through the motherboard to connect it. After several frustrating hours of trying this I realize why I gave the other fan away. It doesn't work on that motherboard. I need a fan that screws in. I return it for a refund and order one over the internet.
It arrives but it comes with only push pins and no screws to secure it. I spend several hours looking through my vast array of screws and only find 2 that work. Next day after work I head to the Radio Shack to see if they have some screws. They are good about having some oddities. That is except I forgot to bring the 2 screws that work to get a match. I take a guess and luckily get the right ones. Actually I bought two different sizes just to be sure.
I get home and get the fan on. Yaye!! Reassemble the computer. I had to take the motherboard out just to get some light on it. That's a bit tedious because of all the little screws holding everything in and all those cables. I mean a ton of them for the mother board, DVD drive, front panel, 2 hard drives. It's a nightmare of cables.
After assembly I plug everything else in, internet cable, speakers, keyboard, mouse, power cord, and printer cable. It turns on and works!! But you know what, that wasn't the fan that was causing the noise. It was a case fan, uhg! The case fan that sits directly over the CPU fan. Hmmm, okay lets just disconnect the case fan and I can connect the side case fan that has remained disconnected since the original build.
Not so easy as I thought. Seems the bad case fan runs through several holes and is intertwined in the mesh of cables I had bundled for tidiness. I pull and tug on the cables to follow the path. Finally it's disconnected. Then there's the side case fan. Not so fast there. I remembered why I hadn't hooked it up. It had a bad 4 pin connection. The pins had become dislodged from the housing. This made it impossible to get a good power connection However there's another way. It also had a 3 pin connection that goes into the motherboard. I plug that in and success.
Now I put the side cases back on and take it to the computer room to hook up and turn it on. DRATS, I get a "NTLDR is Missing Error". What the heck. Something in the back of my mind told me that was the hard drive with the operating system on it. Okay I have two hard drives which one is that! I take it back to the kitchen and see that a sata cable had become unplugged from the hard drive. Easy fix, uh! The sata cable would pop out by breathing on it. I think new cable. I have a ton of these around the house so I find a replacement.
Run it back to the computer room and get the NTLDR error again. Take it back to the kitchen for further repair. Change cables again. Back to the computer room. Same thing.
Hmmm, lets see if the hard drive is showing in the BIOS. DEL and I'm in the BIOS. I see two items in the BIOS, one must be the hard drive and one must be the DVD. Back to the kitchen. Let's see if the power is connected to the hard drive with the Operationg system on it. Yep! Back to the computer room and into the BIOS. I look at the drives again. I look for a long time. Then I realize the DVD drive isn't a SATA drive and that both hard drives are connected and showing such.Ooops! Okay let's reboot and see if it starts. Nope, same error.
Back to BIOS. I look at it again. Go to the boot menu and see both hard drives. Let's switch the hard drive boot order. Then also let's add the DVD drive to the boot order. The DVD was not in the sequence at all which turned out to be a good thing because I was about to try to do a repair with the operating system backup CD. Apparently the BIOS switched the boot sequence when the hard drive became disconnected.
I reboot, beautiful success! It's up it's running and I'm happy. Thought I'd blog about it but then right in the middle of this blog Microsoft deems it the appropriate time to intall updates and reboots the computer!
