All computer guru's PLEASE help me try to solve this problem!

  • Thread starter Thread starter frank_1
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Did you try my idea about checking the DMA settings? Might wanna try some new drivers for the IDE controller too...
 
DMA was set correctly from the get-go. However, The master harddrive is DMA 5, while the slave(the problem child) is set to 2. Does that mean anything????
 
Here is some good info on hard drives and UDMA. You could swap the drives, but then you will be formating and re-installing everything and that always sucks.
My only suggestion would be to try what I last posted in the other thread.
You may also want to see if there are any BIOS updates for your mobo.
This would all be 100% easier if I was right in front of your computer, but that aint happenin.
I wish I could be of more help, but I'm getting to my wits end with this.

Sorry bro ... and ... good luck.
If I can think of anything else, I will post it.

-Ken
 
If you are running the second HD as a slave on the same cable as the main hd, try moving it to be the master on the secondary channel. Then take your main cdrom/burner and make it a slave on the secondary channel with the lesser used cdrom/burner (if you have one) as the slave on the primary channel. This will probably require moving stuff around in the case, and maybe even a set of 5.25" to 3.5" adaptor brackets to mount the second hard disk below the first cdrom/burner. Also make sure you have the second hd on an 80 conductor cable so it can go to DMA5. Your problem might be the fact that both drives are sharing the same ide controller...
 
Yup ....Look at your IDE cables .... if they are 80 conductor cables you should be in good shape. Seeing as how the one drive is only getting UDMA 2, my guess is that it may be on the secondary IDE channel but the cable is not 80 conductor.
You can look at the two cables and tell the difference, if there is any. The primary cable will have a shitload of wires compared to a non-80 conductor cable (one typically used for CD ROM's).
Them fancy lookin round IDE cables that you can get fairly cheap are all 80 conductor.
 
I think I'm just gonna shell out some cash and bring it to some computer store
 
Congrats on the Posts milestone!

Sux to celebrate it this way though huh?

Lets hope the shop can get ya straightened out, without breakin the bank.
 
I suspect this is neither a hard drive problem or a power supply problem, but something else in the PC.

Try the following:

1. Save any data you have on drive 2 back to drive 1
2. Ghost drive 1 to drive 2
3. Remove drive 2 and verify all works with only drive 1 installed
4. Install drive 2 as the main drive and remove drive 1
5. Verify all works with drive 2 as the single hard drive

If all works, this tells you nothing is likely wrong with either drive.

If OK, put drive 1 back as master on IDE cable 1. Put drive 2 on IDE cable 2 as the master there.

Boot from drive 1 and see if all is well.

If not, remove most of your RAM and drop to something like 128, 256, or 512.

See if all works.

Ed
 
I'm assuming you've done the simple things...

Buy 1 can of compressed air...

Take off all your IDE cables ONE BY ONE, and blow any dust etc off of them, then blow any dust of any of the motherboard/drive connectors. Pay attention to what you're doing because it is possible to blow dust INTO them.

What kind of ram do you have (amount on each stick), is it 3x512mb? Check your motherboard manufactures forums or on the web to see if anyone has a problem with all ram slots used up.

There are a few things that seem like they may be wrong.
1) one of your IDE/Power cables became damaged when you changed the drives over
2) PSU is not up to it (and you got a dodgy PSU from antec - unlikely, but then so are all your problems)

Just out of interest - have you updated your PC with all the new critical updates, and device drivers, from http://windowsupdate.microsoft.com

You'd be surprised what kind of shitty hardware errors that fixes (if you've not used it on that windows installation yet) as it installs a lot of drivers quite often.
 
To Ed Dixon

When I build PCs I always have the hard drives on the primary IDE channel with the drives set to Cable Select (CS), using a round IDE cable that defines the Master and Slave by their position on the cable. Likewise I always have the CDRW and DVD on the secondary IDE channel, with the drives set to Cable Select, yadda, yadda, yadda.

I do this because the cables just don't give you enough room to space the drives very far apart from each other, and the cases (given my experience) position the HDD mounts some distance from where you would be plugging in the CDRW and DVD. As a last resort you may consider swapping the mobo for something newer. As long as the new one supports your CPU and memory the cost would be fairly minimal.

Luck.
 
wheelema said:
When I build PCs I always have the hard drives on the primary IDE channel with the drives set to Cable Select (CS), using a round IDE cable that defines the Master and Slave by their position on the cable. Likewise I always have the CDRW and DVD on the secondary IDE channel, with the drives set to Cable Select, yadda, yadda, yadda.

I do this because the cables just don't give you enough room to space the drives very far apart from each other, and the cases (given my experience) position the HDD mounts some distance from where you would be plugging in the CDRW and DVD. As a last resort you may consider swapping the mobo for something newer. As long as the new one supports your CPU and memory the cost would be fairly minimal.

Luck.

Not sure of your point. My suggestion was to determine first if both drives are OK, which I suspect they are. Then to determine is bad RAM might be causing the problem.

Moving drives around in a case can be tricky, but almost any combiantion can be done for a simple test.

Ed
 
Holy Shnikies! I did it!

I did it!

I fixed it!

I first unconncted the power supply then reconnected it, and that got rid of that start up error!

Then I when to Best Buy, returned the Maxtor drive and bought a Seagate 120 gig... Batta Big, Batta Boom! It actually worked!

I have a feeling God was looking out for me today ;-)
 
I thank all that tried to help with this delemma, especially crankz1 cuz he gave a lot of time trying to figure this thing out! Daffydrunk was also another huge helping hand!

Thanks dudes! :D
 
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