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I bought 2 things, one which appeared to be unnecessary, and the other necessary. First, I bought a cheap pci-ata hard drive controller. This partially fixed my problem, but not entirely. Before when I tried to install windows, it would tell me that I have an unmountable volume, so I couldn't really do anything. I bought a Rosewill non-raid pci-card (12 dollars via newegg) and was finally able to install windows. However, I was unable to run my cpu at full speed. I could only put the external frequency of the cpu at 133, which put my clock speed at 1.66, instead of the rated 2.08 or so. If I tried to run the external frequency at 166, the hard drive would click/reset, and refuse to boot into windows. I read some older Socket-A forums, and this seemed to be a problem with the power-supply voltage dropping too low on the 5v rail, which the hdd's couldn't tolerate. I saw the freebie Ultra psu from Fry's, so I picked it up and now my computer is working perfectly. So I'm not sure if I needed the hard drive controller, but it did seem to fix my problem half-way. I also did a bios update in there, just for kicks. Actually, it was off recommendation from someone else. Either way, up and running. There seems to be a lot of talk on the Special deals section about this psu, but it's working for me. It's louder than my truepower was, and it weighed less, which inspired little confidence, but it is working. And my computer is a low power unit, so I don't care if it only puts out 400 watts instead of the rated 500.
Anyway, thanks for the recommendations by all.
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I have owned an a7n8x deluxe for about 3 years and have had repeated hard drive problems on it. At first I chalked it up to bad luck with hard drives, but now I'm looking elsewhere. Another side issue that may or may not be related is that it never liked to start up. So each time I try to start it up, it gets to the windows loading screen, and reboots. After several repeated reboots, it will finally boot into windows. This is status quo, but once it gets going, it's fine, so I just never shut down. About 2x per year, though, I'll get a corrupted file message, and have to repair it with my windows cd. Then after a year and a half, my primary disk failed. I was getting the terrible clicking sound, corruption, and then not showing up. About this time I bought myself a new computer, and gave my old one to my parents. So I bought them a new hard drive, and considered it all better. They owned the machine for about 6 months when their hard drive failed. I wasn't around so they took it to the computer tech in town, and he said that it was corrupted filer tables. So on to drive number 3. Fresh install, and I'm back on it 4 months later because it won't start up, has given me a corrupted file message several times, and windows wants to reformat the drive before I can do any repairing because it is unrecognizable.
2 of the drives that became corrupted were pata, and one was sata. I also had an sata in it when I used it, and my computer had a difficult time sensing and reading it, but now that drive is in my new computer and workin fine.
If you need any more info, I'll be hoverin near my machine all day and night. It's really pissin me off.
I bought 2 things, one which appeared to be unnecessary, and the other necessary. First, I bought a cheap pci-ata hard drive controller. This partially fixed my problem, but not entirely. Before when I tried to install windows, it would tell me that I have an unmountable volume, so I couldn't really do anything. I bought a Rosewill non-raid pci-card (12 dollars via newegg) and was finally able to install windows. However, I was unable to run my cpu at full speed. I could only put the external frequency of the cpu at 133, which put my clock speed at 1.66, instead of the rated 2.08 or so. If I tried to run the external frequency at 166, the hard drive would click/reset, and refuse to boot into windows. I read some older Socket-A forums, and this seemed to be a problem with the power-supply voltage dropping too low on the 5v rail, which the hdd's couldn't tolerate. I saw the freebie Ultra psu from Fry's, so I picked it up and now my computer is working perfectly. So I'm not sure if I needed the hard drive controller, but it did seem to fix my problem half-way. I also did a bios update in there, just for kicks. Actually, it was off recommendation from someone else. Either way, up and running. There seems to be a lot of talk on the Special deals section about this psu, but it's working for me. It's louder than my truepower was, and it weighed less, which inspired little confidence, but it is working. And my computer is a low power unit, so I don't care if it only puts out 400 watts instead of the rated 500.
Anyway, thanks for the recommendations by all.
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I have owned an a7n8x deluxe for about 3 years and have had repeated hard drive problems on it. At first I chalked it up to bad luck with hard drives, but now I'm looking elsewhere. Another side issue that may or may not be related is that it never liked to start up. So each time I try to start it up, it gets to the windows loading screen, and reboots. After several repeated reboots, it will finally boot into windows. This is status quo, but once it gets going, it's fine, so I just never shut down. About 2x per year, though, I'll get a corrupted file message, and have to repair it with my windows cd. Then after a year and a half, my primary disk failed. I was getting the terrible clicking sound, corruption, and then not showing up. About this time I bought myself a new computer, and gave my old one to my parents. So I bought them a new hard drive, and considered it all better. They owned the machine for about 6 months when their hard drive failed. I wasn't around so they took it to the computer tech in town, and he said that it was corrupted filer tables. So on to drive number 3. Fresh install, and I'm back on it 4 months later because it won't start up, has given me a corrupted file message several times, and windows wants to reformat the drive before I can do any repairing because it is unrecognizable.
2 of the drives that became corrupted were pata, and one was sata. I also had an sata in it when I used it, and my computer had a difficult time sensing and reading it, but now that drive is in my new computer and workin fine.
If you need any more info, I'll be hoverin near my machine all day and night. It's really pissin me off.