Strange problem with my computer

Boro

Im perplexed by my computer at the moment. Its acting quite strange. I upgraded recently and bought some components. Things were working fine, but now im having problems.

My system is:

Asus A7N8X mobo
Sapphire Radeon 9700nonpro oc'ed to 324/310
Athlon 2000+ palomino
2 * 256mb pc2700 ddr
Maxtor 10gig drive (bout 4 years old)
IBM 40gig (1.5 years old)
Sony dvd
Asus cdrw
Q-Tech 400w psu
Hauppage tvtuner
Skyhawk case (from Komplett) with D7 display on front

The problems:

The system doesnt seem to pick up my primary slave drive (the IBM 40gig) a lot of the time. Often when i turn on the machine, it just doesnt find it. If i power the computer on and off a few times, then it will pick it up fine and things are groovy. There doesnt seem to be a problem with the drive itself as it works perfectly when i do get it picked up. No corruption or anything of the data, no bad noises etc. The jumpers are all fine for master/slave etc.

When i unplug the master drive, it picks up the ibm every time as slave. Could lack of voltage be causing this?
My Bios tells me that i am getting

5v: 4.83 - 4.86
3v: 3.24 - 3.29
12v: 12.22 - 12.28
vcore: 1.77 - 1.79

I unplugged all my usb devices, the d7 connector, all the power splitters (fans etc) apart from the radeon (draws off a 4pin plug) and the voltages were the same.

Both harddrives worked before my upgrade, never had this issue.


Possibly an unrelated problem:
The D7 display panel on the front of the case used to work fine. It split the main power cable coming into the mobo and got power from there. It used to work fine (displaying temp/time) but recently it started getting a corrupted display. Today it doesnt work at all (and today is when the harddrive issue has become very frequent) and just shows purple on one side, pink on another, with no display at all.

I tried unplugging that and plugging back in after a boot, but its the same. Im wondering if this could be connected to the above issue.

Anyone got any ideas whether this is power/mobo or harddrive related? I do know what im doing (built/repaired lots) but these issues just have me stumped! Would upping the voltage to the radeon have any effect? (havent tried that yet)

When the system does work i get really good performance out of it - see sig

Boro

No ideas anyone? It sucks that i have to switch it on and off 4 or 5 times before i can get both hdd's picked up. I end up leaving it on for days at a time then.

No ideas whether it could be a voltage problem - PSU not supplying enough juice down the 12V lines? Would the gfx card overclock be drawing more/too much power?

Dempsey

Go to BIOS and check the hard disk pre delay under IDE Configuration, give it 5 or 6 seconds. Maybewhat ever its at is not long enough.

Boro

My mobo doesnt have that option.

My PSU (400 watt Qtech) only supplies 4.86 to 4.89 on the 5v line - I think this is whats causing my problems, but i would like a couple of (even if uninformed) opinions before i change my psu

KdjaCL

Sounds more like a BIOS issue than hardware ,check the makers website for bios issues.

Use the magical Google ,I tried this in google "Asus A7N8X not detecting hard drive" and got a few answers seems your not th eonly one with this problem.


http://www.google.ie/search?q=Asus+A7N8X++not+detecting+hard+drive&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&hl=en


kdjac

Dempsey

Originally posted by Boro
My PSU (400 watt Qtech) only supplies 4.86 to 4.89 on the 5v line - I think this is whats causing my problems, but i would like a couple of (even if uninformed) opinions before i change my psu

I would think 4.86 and 4.89 would be within acceptable limits.

Dr Bolouswki

Am I an idiot? Would switching to another IDE cable do it? If the slave gets picked up no prob on every boot when the master is not connected, maybe it's some problem with the cable?

unkel

Ok, this is only a pragmatic solution: why don't you ghost your 10GB (presumably 5400rpm) onto your 40GB (presumably 7200rpm) and switch master/slave. This would boost the performance of your system dramatically since your smaller HD is clearly the bottleneck in a very fine rig.

I don't want to be patronising, but did you check jumper settings properly - I've had problems with cable select and since then only used rigid master or slave. Also, trying new IDE cable might be worth your while. It doesn't look like a boot sector virus. Also worth a try is resetting CMOS (read mobo manual - this should be a jumper).

Boro

Thanks for the suggestions.

KdjaC - it doesnt seem to be a bios issue. I changed the bios and still the same. Thanks for the link, interesting info there.

Killah_B - dont think your an idiot its not the cable, tried a couple of different ones.


unkel - The ghosting is a good idea but i dont have any spare room, probably buying a new hdd in the near future and will ghost it onto that. The jumpers are properly set and resetting the CMOS has no effect.

However, the issue does seem to have stopped occuring as often. It only happens every 4th or 5th cold boot now.

The_Bullman

when you say that the jumpers are properly set do you mean that they are set to master and slave?

I have the same motherboard. It is known to have issues with western digital hard drives for a start. The solution in my case was to switch the jumpers to cable select. Everything is going grand now.

As an aside, have you upgraded your bios yet. I would reccomend you do this as soon as possible. That also made a difference to my system.

fatmander

2 long shots
One way of getting around not havin a hard disk boot delay is to tell the computer to boot
floppy-then cd- then IDE0 last- can give you a couple of seconds

Something you have probably already tried probably
Change the master position on the cable(IDE0 -not jumpers), to the slave positon (IDE1) on your primary

unkel

unkel - The ghosting is a good idea but i dont have any spare room, probably buying a new hdd in the near future and will ghost it onto that.

no need for HD space, just ghost onto CDR with your ASUS CDRW