![[H]ard|Forum](/styles/hardforum/xenforo/logo_dark.png){kind=logo}
voicenosound
n00b
- Joined
- Sep 14, 2007
- Messages
- 11
Hi there, my thread is to do with the PSU, Mobo and HDD, but I believe it's mainly PSU related. I warn you in advance this thread is really, really long because i felt it necessary to explain everything. So yeah, please help.....
Ok well, it all started a few weeks ago. First my fan on my motherboard started what can only be described as high-pitched squealing and dropping from 6000RPM to 4000RPM (which, although stopped the screaming, was NOT good for the motherboard). It had done this a few times before in the past though and fortunately my dad and I knew how to solve it. We took out the fan, cleared out the dust and re-greased it.
The one thing that hadn't happened before with my screaming fan (this is also prior to fixing it) however was my computer freezing mid-use. It wouldn't matter what i was doing, whether gaming or just on the desktop. At first I attributed this freezing to the screaming fan. I have now, however, re-evaluated my idea as to whats causing it.
You see, when my computer froze i went to restart it, the problem is when it did, it would not detect the harddrive. To fix this, i first had to turn off my computer, then turn off the power supply, wait a couple of seconds, turn the PSU back on, wait a few more seconds/minutes (sometimes i had to leave it for 20 minutes or so) so it would boot up properly and detect the HDD and boot into windows.
So far it looks like the HDD is the culprit right? Well, heres a few more "issues" that arose when the fan was screaming. First of all, the computer would struggle to boot. I'm not even kidding, i could shut down the computer, come back a couple minutes later (or hours/first thing in the morning etc.) to turn it back on for it to just sit their like a car with the handbrake on, so I'd go around to the back of the PC, switch off the PSU, wait a few beats, turn it back on, wait a couple more, then switch it on. Sometimes it'd switch back on, other times not and others it would sit there, then after a few moments the fans would whirr slightly and start making sparking noises. (The first time this happened I knew it couldn't possibly be a good sign so I ran around to the back and shut the PSU off faster than you can say "OMFGTHISPOSTISSOLONGLOL"
)
Although a pain at first, i put up with this, just gritting my teeth and getting on with it. After my dad and I sorted the Motherboard fan the problems stopped. Everything was perfect and was going swimmingly well. The computer would boot, wouldn't even make the slightest squeal at 6kRPM, the harddrive would always be detected. Life was good.
Then a few days later disaster struck, my computer now struggles to boot at all, and when it does it rarely ever detects the HDD. In fact, just the other day it did detect the HDD and although it POST'd (is that the right word?) perfectly fine when it came to the point where it says "Detecting IDE drives.....", after it detected the HDD (which is SATA btw) it stopped there and didn't move any further (not even to "Verifying DMI data"). So i then turned off the computer, tried to turn it back on and hit the same problem. So i had to turn the PSU on and off again and to get the computer to boot again, which resulted in the HDD to not be detected again.
(Also, I've tried switching the slot the HDD is in to no avail. Oh and another thing, before my system completely died it did have a couple of errors when it reached the DMI pool data booting stage of the PC.)
I haven't bothered to try to boot since.
---------------------------------------------------------
I built my PC myself 2 years ago and has only had a few problems in the past but nothing ever on the scale of this.
I bought all my parts for my PC (sans graphics card) at this site: http://www.planetmicro.co.uk.
Here's my specs:
AMD 3000+ 64 1.8 GHz Sck939
Foxconn WinFast NF4UK8AA-8EKRS Motherboard
1GB DDR400 RAM
550W PSU (Cheap generic PSU similar to this http://www.planetmicro.co.uk/product_info.asp?stockcode=M002673)
Maxtor 160GB 7200RPM SATA Harddrive (It was cheap and i think it was a Maxtor - I'll check properly later)
Nvidia Geforce 6800(vanilla) PCI-Express 325/600 clocks(standard)
Creative X-fi Xtreme Gamer Soundcard
Not sure you need to know anything else such as my monitor etc.
Heres my ideas as to what might have happened:
The PSU is faulty and is the cause of the problems I've been having. The PSU has either caused the Motherboard to fail to detect the HDD every time i boot the computer now or the PSU has created bad sectors in the HDD which now causes it to fail to be detected.
Please help me. I really don't know what to do anymore...
Voice.
P.S. Sorry about the long post, but i really felt it was necessary to explain everything.
Oh and if theres any spelling mistakes i apologise. Just try to guess what I meant to say.
EDIT:
Overheating: My CPU is always sitting around 30-35C which I'm pretty certain isn't a dangerous temp.
Another thing i forgot to mention was that sometimes (this is occuring more often) when "Detecing IDE drives...." kicks in it sometimes hangs when trying to detect my harddrive and then skips past it with "none", it's as if it knows its there but can't quite see it.
Ok well, it all started a few weeks ago. First my fan on my motherboard started what can only be described as high-pitched squealing and dropping from 6000RPM to 4000RPM (which, although stopped the screaming, was NOT good for the motherboard). It had done this a few times before in the past though and fortunately my dad and I knew how to solve it. We took out the fan, cleared out the dust and re-greased it.
The one thing that hadn't happened before with my screaming fan (this is also prior to fixing it) however was my computer freezing mid-use. It wouldn't matter what i was doing, whether gaming or just on the desktop. At first I attributed this freezing to the screaming fan. I have now, however, re-evaluated my idea as to whats causing it.
You see, when my computer froze i went to restart it, the problem is when it did, it would not detect the harddrive. To fix this, i first had to turn off my computer, then turn off the power supply, wait a couple of seconds, turn the PSU back on, wait a few more seconds/minutes (sometimes i had to leave it for 20 minutes or so) so it would boot up properly and detect the HDD and boot into windows.
So far it looks like the HDD is the culprit right? Well, heres a few more "issues" that arose when the fan was screaming. First of all, the computer would struggle to boot. I'm not even kidding, i could shut down the computer, come back a couple minutes later (or hours/first thing in the morning etc.) to turn it back on for it to just sit their like a car with the handbrake on, so I'd go around to the back of the PC, switch off the PSU, wait a few beats, turn it back on, wait a couple more, then switch it on. Sometimes it'd switch back on, other times not and others it would sit there, then after a few moments the fans would whirr slightly and start making sparking noises. (The first time this happened I knew it couldn't possibly be a good sign so I ran around to the back and shut the PSU off faster than you can say "OMFGTHISPOSTISSOLONGLOL"
)Although a pain at first, i put up with this, just gritting my teeth and getting on with it. After my dad and I sorted the Motherboard fan the problems stopped. Everything was perfect and was going swimmingly well. The computer would boot, wouldn't even make the slightest squeal at 6kRPM, the harddrive would always be detected. Life was good.
Then a few days later disaster struck, my computer now struggles to boot at all, and when it does it rarely ever detects the HDD. In fact, just the other day it did detect the HDD and although it POST'd (is that the right word?) perfectly fine when it came to the point where it says "Detecting IDE drives.....", after it detected the HDD (which is SATA btw) it stopped there and didn't move any further (not even to "Verifying DMI data"). So i then turned off the computer, tried to turn it back on and hit the same problem. So i had to turn the PSU on and off again and to get the computer to boot again, which resulted in the HDD to not be detected again.
(Also, I've tried switching the slot the HDD is in to no avail. Oh and another thing, before my system completely died it did have a couple of errors when it reached the DMI pool data booting stage of the PC.)
I haven't bothered to try to boot since.
---------------------------------------------------------
I built my PC myself 2 years ago and has only had a few problems in the past but nothing ever on the scale of this.
I bought all my parts for my PC (sans graphics card) at this site: http://www.planetmicro.co.uk.
Here's my specs:
AMD 3000+ 64 1.8 GHz Sck939
Foxconn WinFast NF4UK8AA-8EKRS Motherboard
1GB DDR400 RAM
550W PSU (Cheap generic PSU similar to this http://www.planetmicro.co.uk/product_info.asp?stockcode=M002673)
Maxtor 160GB 7200RPM SATA Harddrive (It was cheap and i think it was a Maxtor - I'll check properly later)
Nvidia Geforce 6800(vanilla) PCI-Express 325/600 clocks(standard)
Creative X-fi Xtreme Gamer Soundcard
Not sure you need to know anything else such as my monitor etc.
Heres my ideas as to what might have happened:
The PSU is faulty and is the cause of the problems I've been having. The PSU has either caused the Motherboard to fail to detect the HDD every time i boot the computer now or the PSU has created bad sectors in the HDD which now causes it to fail to be detected.
Please help me. I really don't know what to do anymore...
Voice.
P.S. Sorry about the long post, but i really felt it was necessary to explain everything.
Oh and if theres any spelling mistakes i apologise. Just try to guess what I meant to say.
EDIT:
Overheating: My CPU is always sitting around 30-35C which I'm pretty certain isn't a dangerous temp.
Another thing i forgot to mention was that sometimes (this is occuring more often) when "Detecing IDE drives...." kicks in it sometimes hangs when trying to detect my harddrive and then skips past it with "none", it's as if it knows its there but can't quite see it.