Pc Start Up Problem..

[rich4130]

Heya, um, my pc has a really annoying start up problem, it needs resetting about 50 times to get it to boot up.

It almost has a personality to it, in a kinda, its warming up way, it needs resetting to get what I thinks the harddisk to boot up, then it gets slightly furter each time, until the 'windows did not start' screen is reached, where it needs resetting from there to finally get it to work.

Its also been cutting out if I leave it for any length of time, and requires more resetting to get it to go.

I'm guessing some of it maybe due to over heating, the small fan on the motherboard seems to have stopped working..

Its a Gigabyte socket A 7VTX mobo, with an 1400mhz athlon, i know this is vague, but can anybody help?

thanks

Rich

[PaRtZ]

Sound familiar?

Mine used to be so irritating id kick it. It actually fixed it in a couple of instances. The broken fan probably wont help but might be something up with the bios (sorry to state the obvious lol)

My pc isn't as bad as that though, You just have to turn it on, off then on again while the fan is still whirring....

Don't we all love pc's

[munkee]

I had this problem years ago on my advent.To cut a long story short.. the hard disk was screwed up and needed to be replaced. Run scan disk to see if there are any bad sectors.

[poopipe]

I'm guessing some of it maybe due to over heating, the small fan on the motherboard seems to have stopped working..

it turns off when that happens - it's a safety feature to prevent your cpu frying

does the fan work when you first turn it on and then turn off later?

if so, go into the bios and disable the clever power saving thingummy for the CPU fan - I cant remember what it's called or exactly where it lives. That'll stop it turning the fan off when it 'thinks' it doesn't need it.

might work

[rich4130]

Cheers guys, think you may be right about the HDD, gonna replace it, Scan disk wont complete as it turns itself off, but it doeslt look too healthy!

What is there to look out for when buying a HDD? interface ata speed thingy? is 100 pretty standard?

Thanks

Rich

This be ok?

Dabs Link.

[poopipe]

Cheers guys, think you may be right about the HDD, gonna replace it, Scan disk wont complete as it turns itself off, but it doeslt look too healthy!

What is there to look out for when buying a HDD? interface ata speed thingy? is 100 pretty standard?

Thanks

Rich

This be ok?

Dabs Link.

that board appears to only go up to ata 100 so that's as fast as you're likely to get. I'm a big fan of maxtor disks but WD are supposed to be good so you're fine there.

One question though.. Why such a tiny little disk ?

[delusional]

Buy a Seagate Barracuda HDD. I used to always buy Western Digital for the performance benefits, then a few of them unexpectedly died on me taking down lots of my hard earned (well, downloaded) data with it. Nowadays I trust the only HDD manufacturer to give a 5 year warranty on their drives (that's 2 years more than most) and with the best reputation for reliability - Seagate! After all, the performance benefits of a Western Digital are only fractional really, and most of the time (all of the time?) you're unlikely to even notice the difference. Of course, they're still going to die eventually, but 2 years extra on warranty is a lot of time, making them almost half the price of other drives in the long term.

Also, as poopipe said, why so small? It's not even saving you any money (well not really). 80 gig drives are pretty much the same price, and 160 gig drives come in at about £40. The sweet spot at the moment seems to be around 320gig, which is weighing in at just under £70 over at Over Clockers. It's probably worth paying that little bit extra knowing you'll not be running out of storage space any time soon!

[rich4130]

Thats brilliant, I'l get a 'Seagate Barracuda 7200.9 80GB', be plenty big enough for my use, I didnt realise the size/price ratio was so close!

Is there anything to be careful of when fitting? static etc? or needing different cables, or the jumper thingies?

cheers

rich

[Krisboats]

Thats brilliant, I'l get a 'Seagate Barracuda 7200.9 80GB', be plenty big enough for my use, I didnt realise the size/price ratio was so close!

Is there anything to be careful of when fitting? static etc? or needing different cables, or the jumper thingies?

cheers

rich

Two types, SATA or IDE. have a look inside, if your current hard drive has a big thick cable (same as a floppy drive) coming out the back, then its an IDE one, if its a smaller sleeker cable its a SATA one.

If your motherboard has the ability to run a SATA disk then i would probably suggest it, but you'll probably have to set RAID up to get it working and i dont know if you'd be confident enough to do that (not making a cheap comment, just it daunts some people).

However i dont reckon you'll notice the difference between an IDE or SATA hard drive so long as it has a cache of 16mb. Make sure you get that, the bigger the cache the better.

Have a look inside at your pc and tell us what type your current drive is then we can advise you on what to get a bit more precisely.

Existing cable should be fine still, static is overcome by touchin an unpainted bit of radiator before fiddling inside the pc.

Edited November 1, 2006 by Krisboats

[rich4130]

Riiight, Got my new hdd sat here, but I cannot boot up my PC to back up the existing data! the boot.ini file is damaged, get the blue 'unmountable_boot_volume' screen on startup, had this before, use the windows cd to repair the file etc, but I cannot get it to boot from the cd? just consistantly get the blue screen!

Is there any way I can get it to boot up?

Anyway i could install the new hdd, then transfer the data from my old disk onto it?

getting slightly desperate now!

thanks everybody.

[poopipe]

Riiight, Got my new hdd sat here, but I cannot boot up my PC to back up the existing data! the boot.ini file is damaged, get the blue 'unmountable_boot_volume' screen on startup, had this before, use the windows cd to repair the file etc, but I cannot get it to boot from the cd? just consistantly get the blue screen!

Is there any way I can get it to boot up?

Anyway i could install the new hdd, then transfer the data from my old disk onto it?

getting slightly desperate now!

thanks everybody.

given that your old disk isn't all that reliable...

take the old disk out

put the new one in

install windows

then....

put the old disk in (on a different cable / plug - so you end up with both plugged in), boot off the new one (you may have to bugger about with jumpers to stop it botting off the old one, you may not) and pray it still works well enough to copy stuff off. If its just the boot.ini that's knackered you'll be fine.

I'd then wipe the old disk completely (proper format) and test it for a bit to see if it's still physically ok - if it seems alright I'd use it for storing porn and other unimportant stuff

[CBProductions]

I'd use it for storing porn and other unimportant stuff

That doesnt sound uninportant , What ever you do , never disable the cpu heat sensor as it is there for a reason , like poo pipe said reintsall windows and use the secondary hard drive for dumping crap on. Worth while note if a pc doesnt start up properly it's usually for a reason so resetting it muiltiple times isnt going to help your situation.

[poopipe]

That doesnt sound uninportant , What ever you do , never disable the cpu heat sensor as it is there for a reason , like poo pipe said reintsall windows and use the secondary hard drive for dumping crap on. Worth while note if a pc doesnt start up properly it's usually for a reason so resetting it muiltiple times isnt going to help your situation.

the heat sensor thing...

certain AMD chipsets (eg. early nforce4 ) develop a conflict between the emergency heat related emergency cutoff thing and the powersaving thing that turns off the CPU fan when it isn't needed.

Basically, one sensor thinks "ooh, the cpu is cold and doing f**kall, I don't need to run the fan anymore" so it turns it off.

The other sensor then thinks 'buggeration! the cpu fan isn't running - I'd better do the emergency shutdown thing in case I catch fire' and shuts the machine down.

Usually what happens is that you turn the machine on, the cpu fan stops spinning cos the machine is cold and the machine turns itself off. I found that if you mash the on/off button enough times you can often keep the fan spinning long enough to boot and it'll shit itself on you at some random point in a few minutes

In these cases you disable the power-saving bit of the equation - not the emergency cutoff and everything goes back to normal

[rich4130]

Cheers, I shall try it, What kinda cable do I need, as mine has just the single connector for a HDD.

How do the jumpers work as well?

thankkkkkkkkks

rich

[poopipe]

Cheers, I shall try it, What kinda cable do I need, as mine has just the single connector for a HDD.

How do the jumpers work as well?

thankkkkkkkkks

rich

just get another bog standard IDE cable

jumpers depend entirely on the disk - there's usually a sticker on top of it that shows you how to set it up. basically the second disk doesn't want to be master

[tomturd]

basically the second disk doesn't want to be master

and the first (the new one) does

[rich4130]

Cool cool, cheers, one of these I need yeye?

http://www.dabs.com/productview.aspx?Quick...NavigationKey=0

[poopipe]

yus

[rich4130]

Ahhhhman, no working:(

New HDD is in, set to primary, old as slave, no booting up as usual.

New HDD on its own, same old problem...grr

[poopipe]

erm

genuine windows cd in drive?

BIOS set to boot off CD ?

if yes, then it wasn't the hard drive ...

does the cpu fan turn off immediately after you power the machine up?

Edited November 20, 2006 by poopipe

[anzo]

I'm a big fan of maxtor

Ergh, I have a maxtor in now, first one was faulty, but got it replaced pretty sharpish. Heard theres a few problems with Maxtors being faulty, although I think they have now been bought by Seagate, so the problem as gone.

Not 100% true, read it somewhere about the maxtor/seagate take over...or dreamt it.

[poopipe]

Ergh, I have a maxtor in now, first one was faulty, but got it replaced pretty sharpish. Heard theres a few problems with Maxtors being faulty, although I think they have now been bought by Seagate, so the problem as gone.

Not 100% true, read it somewhere about the maxtor/seagate take over...or dreamt it.

My mum killed a couple of 60-80GB maxtors pretty quickly a while back but I've had an 80GB and a 120GB for at least 2-3 years with no problems (unlike the pair of hugely expensive IBM disks I've lost in that period). The posher Maxtors like my 250GB have a 3 year failure warranty so they must be fairly confident in them.

but..

disks is disks and they all fail eventually (I haven't trusted them since they went past 2GB) If you don't back stuff up you deserve to lose everything and you don't even get to complain about it

[Extreme_biker0]

My mum killed a couple of 60-80GB maxtors pretty quickly a while back but I've had an 80GB and a 120GB for at least 2-3 years with no problems (unlike the pair of hugely expensive IBM disks I've lost in that period). The posher Maxtors like my 250GB have a 3 year failure warranty so they must be fairly confident in them.

but..

disks is disks and they all fail eventually (I haven't trusted them since they went past 2GB) If you don't back stuff up you deserve to lose everything and you don't even get to complain about it

How the baby jesus do you back 250 gig up pooh?

53 dvdr's?

Aren't tape drives slow and expensive, thus not going to get used?

A raid setup?

Please share bear.

PS wonder what happened to my informative post?

Edited November 21, 2006 by Extreme_biker0

[poopipe]

it's easy - you only back up the important stuff like savegame folders and work.

You don't need to back up apps or games - you've got the CDs (unless you're a thief in which case you just burn the installers to DVD when you've stolen it dont you?), porn isn't important (unless its special like the paris hilton video), movies and stuff you burn to DVD when you get them (dont you ? ).

I've learnt (the hard way) to religiously organise my shit and make lists so it's easy to back up. Everything gets dated and stashed away neatly.

I tend to store everything important on more than one disk too - just on the off chance something goes tits up and then back up to a pile of DVDs every few months when I'm trying to avoid housework or something.

RAID is ok in emergencies but isn't a long term solution - for a start it won't help if your PSU goes and blows the whole machine up (it happens) or you drop it down the stairs (which also happens)

I don't do it all often enough really though - I just don't allow myself to cry when it all goes wrong.

edit::

yes, I wonder what happened to your 'informative' post also..

Edited November 21, 2006 by poopipe

[anzo]

unless its special like the paris hilton video

f**king Nightvisionrama! Crap as.