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Computer problem.. not sure what... help?

K

Kuo

Gawd
Joined
Jun 7, 2001
Messages
641
Hey,

So, I'm here working with a Dell OptiFlex, and I seem to be getting an interesting problem... I'll explain what I've done. (running Win2k)

At first, nothing was booting. No boot from HD or CD ROM. I mean the Dell boot screen would show, then the "strike f1 to try again, f2 to enter start up" type screen. (Dell machines don't really show much of a POST).

I enter bios setup, and NONE of the drives are detected. I open the computer, check, reconnect, etc.. all the IDE cables and power connectors. Still nothing. I make a set of Win2k boot disks and try to boot from them. It works (so at least I can boot from floppy, more on this in a bit).

On a hunch, I decide to flash the BIOS (from A01 -> A05). Then, stuff starts working, SOMETIMES (this could be related to flashing, or completely independent).

Right after flashing, all my drives are detected, but the Windows boot hangs midway. I restart again, enter bios, and this time, my CD drives are detected, but Hard Drives NOT. But, while the cd drives are detected, I can't boot from cd! I get the 'f1 and f2' error message again!

I reboot a few times, and notice that 1 outa 10 times or so, the HD seems to get detected and Windows starts to boot.. only to always hang midway. Regardless, I can't ever seem to get cd drives to boot, although they are always detected.

So I decide it's back to using the floppies - but for some reason, they no longer boot! Disk1 doesn't seem to do anything (the f1/f2 error msg yet again). On yet another hunch, I re-create the boot disks, but only this time I write protect the disk - and it works!

But, I don't get anything useful out of that (since the HD still isn't detected, so it's not like I can really do anything).

I create a Win95 bootdisk so i can get a DOS command prompt. From there, I "fixboot" and walla! That seems to have made the drives detectable, and bootable! All of them, including the cd-rom drives.

This time, Win2k gets through the boot, but hangs at the login! (After I enter password, and hit "ok," it hangs). I try safe mode - it boots all the way in.

I reboot w/ Win2k cd in and get into recovery console and do "chkdsk c: /p" and no errors detected. I do a "chkdsk c: /r," and it hangs at 50-51% (differs between the two - I tried it two times).

So now, I can't think of what else to do short of re-formatting the drive. Safe mode worked, so I managed to back up whatever data I needed onto floppy disks. But I would really perfer not to have to format.

I'm doing all of this with network unplugged, no USB devices in, etc.. (to minimize components, such as from USB device driver errors, although I doubt that would effect my problem).

Please, anyone got suggestions on what more to try? Or anything I should clerify of what I've done? Thanks
 
Sounds like PSU, and/or jumpers. Do you still have the problem after just rebooting (as in ctrl+alt+del) rather than power down/power up?
 
So I ended up leaving chkdsk running over night, and when I got up, it was done and said no problems found.

Now, the suggestion of a possible faulty PSU.... I just don't see how that can be the case.. and here's why.

This morning, after no error on chkdsk, I rebooted the machine again and successfully logged into Win2k. To test whether or not that was a one time thing, I restarted Windows (start-run-restart, not cold boot) and logged into Administrator, again. This time, AFTER logging in (the login screen went away, I saw the start menu and everything), the system just froze. ctrl-alt-del wasn't responding either.

I used the power button - off on - and started the machine up again, and walla, i was back to my original problem! no hard disks found. I did the same thing i did yesterday - rebuilt the main partition boot record (fixboot) and the HDs were found again and i started booting into Windows. This time, during the login process, the computer froze AGAIN, and once again, my HDs were gone.

It seems that whenever Windows freezes, the next reboot, I lose my HDs. Everytime I rebuild the boot record, they come back.

I don't think this is connected to a PSU problem.. if it so, how so? How can the PSU effect this?
 
It is always best to go back to the real basics. Start of with the MB, memory (1 stick if possible), CPU of course, and just the HDD. I would disconnect the CD's, other HDD, and even the floppy though this may be optional. Check the BIOS settings and make sure it is set to boot from the drive and then see what happens. If this works start adding other devices until it fails.

- Zych
 
I would disconnect one drive from the chain...I am assuming they are all SCSI drives that you have...you got 3 HD listed....perhaps it is a jumper not set proper, a bad cable, 1 drive might NOT be a SCSI in which case that would screw you up too...theres a lot of different things it can be....it may even be that the PSU can't handle all the components so unplug a couple and just try it for a bit.
 
vote two for PSU problems possibly overloaded PSU thats just now starting to friek, and that DOES happen... also the things you are describing are very indicative of a PSU thats slightly overloaded and/or faulty.
 
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