It'll post, but won't boot.

[Cocytus]

At times after I've put my system back together after upgrades/maintenance etc, My Lite on-CD drive bay has a bug that it opens on its own during boot and won't stay closed after I get the system back together. In the past, I've powered down the system, opened the case and pulled the power cable off of the drive, waited 30 seconds, plugged it back in, powered up and the drive acted normally again. It's happened plenty of times and is annoying, but no big deal. Like I said, only after an upgrade.

Well, last night after a successful upgrade...I got lazy...and real stupid.

The drive, as usual after an upgrade kept popping open. WHILE THE SYSTEM WAS ON and the side panel off, I unplugged the drive...waited 30 seconds and made the move to plug that drive back in. The moment the plug made physical contact with the socket on the back of the drive...the entire system instantly powered down.

I started sweating. I gave it 60 seconds, and powered back up. When she powers up now, it identifies the bios, chipset, CPU, clock settings, performs the memory check, identifies the primary and secondary masters and slaves....and it goes no further. (I guess that's called posting?) It just sits there on that initial screen with all the identifying info. It doesn't seem to be even attempting to boot. I've done nothing else, because I really don't know what to do...

There are no irregular beeps of any kind. I CAN get into bios.

Tell me there is a minor fix for this. Tell me I haven't screwed myself.

Epox Nforce 2 motherboard, Windows XP, AMD Barton 2500.

 

[jose]

You prob. blew your ide controller, it's not designed to hot swap..

Guess it's time to upgrade to a NF4 system.

Regards,
Jose

 

[AMDZen]

Yea, you could have gotten lucky and simply blown the IDE controller on the MoBo. In which case you might be able to boot off of a seperate controller, if you have another IDE controller laying around - throw it in an open slot and try it out. Not sure what you did here, I can honestly say that I ALWAYS power down, and turn off the PSU with the switch in the back, and even disconnect the 20-pin or 24-pin motherboard power cable before messing around with anything internal.

 

[Cocytus]

Not to discount your theory...but any other ideas before I just throw in the towel? Are there are other steps I can take to verify the problem / attempt to get it to boot?

If the IDE controller went, would it still be identifying the primary/secondary masters and slaves?

Also, if the IDE controller is fried, I can buy an IDE controller that fits in a PCI slot?

 

[allanon1965]

yes buy an ide controller that goes in a pci slot and it will most likely boot then

 

[Cocytus]

IDE controller that goes into a PCI slot. I'll get one.

Few other questions....

1. Will the new controller simply "work" after it's inserted, or will it require configuration?

2. Will this new IDE controller perform like as the one I fried?
3. Will it's performance be slower/less than the onboard one?
4. Which one should I get and how much should I expect to spend?

Anything else I might need to know?

 

[allanon1965]

you should get one that is rated for ATA133 and i dont know the cost....i used them before and never noticed any difference, but i never benchmarked them either....

 

[Cocytus]

Will the new one need configuration or will it just "go?" (Don't you love idiots like me...)

 

[jose]

I'd think you'd have to reload your OS because the ide card may be a different manf. and/or you need addl. drivers.

And always unplug your psu before messing w/ anything in your computer.

 

[stevty2889]

Since that happned, have you tried booting up with the CD drive disconnected? Perhaps it just blew the drive, rather than the IDE controler since it's still detecting the devices after all. I would assume that the CD-rom is the last IDE device it's detecting, and thats when it's freezing up..

 

[superkdogg]

Have you reset CMOS? Sometimes you can give the mobo a jolt that it doesn't like but a reset can help.

Also, try get into BIOS and either disable the channel that the CDR is on or boot from floppy. That will help rule out that the mobo itself is the culprit. It has the feeling of an easy fix or at worst a PCI IDE card.

 

[Cocytus]

EDIT- Superkdogg, I'll try that.

 

[Cocytus]

No dice. I tried unplugging the questionable drive. It posted, then listed all the onboard components and their IRQ assignments but seems to hang while "Verifying DMI Pool."
The Hard drive light comes on and stays lit through the hang.

I tried disabling that channel that the drive is on...same thing.

Cleared the Cmos...it posts but hangs on at "Detecting IDE Drives." It seems unable to detect drives now. Again the hard drive light comes on and stays lit.

Does this look more and more like the IDE Controller is fried?

If I get a new IDE controller pci card, will it require configuration and/or driver installation( if so, how do I do that since the system won't boot...)...or can I just insert the card, connect the drives and power up?

 

[allanon1965]

insert the card and powerup i do it all the time on messed up systems, the card will show up, you need to make sure that the choice for booting from other devices is checked in the bios, different boards have it different ways..... what board are you using?

 

[Cocytus]

I've got the Epox EP-8RDA3+. It's an Nforce2 board.

Here are the quick specs: http://www.epox.com/USA/product.asp?id=EP-8RDA3plus

 

[allanon1965]

set it to boot from scsi in your advance settings in the bios, it should work fine if the hd is ok.

 

[Cocytus]

If it boots and all seems normal...is there anything else I need to do to finalize the process? (Such as changing that boot setting again or any other Bios settings?)

 

[allanon1965]

none that i have ever felt the need to do...

 

[grohl]

I used to have an ASUS board with a Promise RAID PCI controller card. Thru the BIOS I could configure it to boot through a PCI controller card. I'm sure you could pick a controller card for like nothing now because they're all obviously on the MOBO.

 

[Cocytus]

The IDE Controller card did it's job, however...I can't get around a BSOD.
When I ask it to boot from my original HD, it begins to boot Windows but BSOD's mentioning that the HD might be corrupt. I tried getting in via Safe Mode...last known good configuration.....still BSOD.

When I make my second completely empty HD (it was in the system at the time of my original stupidity) the master and boot from the CDROM with the XP setup disk...I still get a BSOD.

CPU seems to work...CDROM seems to work....Ram passes its check...Video card is posting.

So what do you think? Along with the onboard IDE controller...did I also barbeque both hard drives...or do you think the motherboard has taken a critical hit? Or both...?

 

[allanon1965]

take the hd out of the picture, boot only with cdrom, you should get a message saying that there is no hard drive present or something similar...see what happens...were both hd's on the same ide controller?...

 

[Cocytus]

Before the incident:

Both HD's were on the same controller. The motherboard of course has 2 onboard IDE controllers. I had the HD's on one and the CD'S on the the other. It was the one that the CD drives wereon that took the surge.

After the incident:

After putting in the IDE controller card, I put only the main HD (where windows XP is installed) on the IDE card. The IDE successfully detects and labels it as a western digital drive, it tries to boot off of the HD, I got a options to start in safe/normal/last known good config..etc but no matter what option I chose (I did this multiple times)...always got the BSOD with an error message that suggested the problem was caused by a recent hardware change or drive corruption. Should I give up on that drive?

I then replaced the orignal HD with the other HD that was completely empty, then added a cdrom to the other slot on the IDE card and booted from the XP setup disk. I can boot from the CDROM drive no problem...

I tried to install XP on the blank drive, but got another BSOD with a nonspecific error.

Are the BSOD's coming from bad HD's (which seems unlikely since they weren't even on the same onboard IDE controller that suffered the surge)....or has the motherboard sustained damage deeper than just blown ide controllers....?

 

[allanon1965]

try without having a cdrom on the ide card.....try the cdrom on the mb secondary ide and see if it will load windows on the hd hooked to the ide card

 

[Cocytus]

Alright...there's a heartbeat and the patient has opened her eyes. The HD booted into Windows.

The onboard IDE controller doesn't seem fried. I unplugged all drives except the main HD and plugged it into the onboard IDE 1. I booted on the last known good configuration. Of course I had the delight of getting to reactivate Windows (quick call to India is always nice...).

The system is behaving somewhat normally except that on restarts, sometimes when it gets to the desktop, there are no icons and firewall and antivirus programs that normally startup fail to load and display error messages. Then on other restarts, at the tail end of the windows splash screen and just before the desktop display...there's an error that says one registry file had to be recovered from a log and that it was successful. Then it goes on to the desktop that is completely normal and the system behaves completely normally (even the firewall and the AV).

What do you think? Suggestions to stabilize this thing? I won't restart it until I have a better plan of action.

 

[allanon1965]

recover all the info you need off the drive and attempt to reformat again.....see what happens, and do it with only the minimum hardware in it, 1 stick ram, 1 hd, 1cdrom,vid card, thats is.....see what happens...