ECS Nforce 3 mobo taking forever to POST and more problems

[DonIsHere]

I have a A64 3000+ and ECS Nforce-3 mobo. One day it decided to take forever to post, hanging at the "Detecting IDE drives" phase. Eventually it will post but won't boot, saying "Insert boot drive" (don't remember exactly).

I then refomatted my hard drive (which took longer than usual), get to the DOS-based Windows Setup to copy all the necessary files to finish loading windows on the hard drive. After the reboot, comp still hangs at "Detecting IDE drives" then goes to "Insert boot drive."

So I put in a brand new hard drive... DOS-based windows setup, copied Windows files, reboot, got the same messages.

Disconnected the hard drives and dvd drives, still hanging at "Detecting IDE drives". Wondering if it was the power supply, I replaced that too. No dice.

Any ideas?

I really hate to think the mobo's gotta be replaced, but if that's the case, someone please tell me. I'm holding out because I don't want to shell out the $ for a new DDR2 mobo when I only have DDR memory (and a new CPU, might as well if replacing mobo and mem).

Thanks.

 

[Captante]

Considering all the steps you've already taken I'd say its a virtual certainty your motherboard has failed ... if you have skt 939 or 754 you can still get a decent Nforce 3 based board if you have a high-end AGP graphics card & care about gaming. If you have skt 939 & a nice AGP card or don't care much about gaming I'd go for an Nforce 4 based 6100/6150 MB with decent integrated video & a PCIe slot so you can add better video later.. either of these will allow you to re-use your DDR1 RAM.

 

[stevf]

have you tried disabling the ide controller in bios and see if it posts? one of the ide controller may be bad(not sure if you have one or two). If it has 2 controllers, may be able to disable the first and use second. also if it is just the controller you can get a pci controller. Probably not worth spending too much money on it

 

[Captante]

Originally posted by: stevf
have you tried disabling the ide controller in bios and see if it posts? one of the ide controller may be bad(not sure if you have one or two). If it has 2 controllers, may be able to disable the first and use second. also if it is just the controller you can get a pci controller. Probably not worth spending too much money on it

In particular the PCI IDE controller is a good suggestion .... you may be able to snag a decent Promise ATA-100 model for less then $30 ... I'm pretty sure the same chip controls both IDE channels on the NForce 3 though so I doubt disabling one of the channels will have any effect.


Promise ATA-133 PCI (New) @ $34 + $5 shipping at Newegg

Promise ATA-100 PCI (Used) @ $8 shipped on AT FS/FT *(I'd go with this or a similar deal)*