Strange Computer Oddity

SupraGreen · 10-07-2002, 07:44 PM

Ok, I have had a lot of bad luck in the last 4 months and my travels for advice have taken me thus far. To explain what's going on, ill have to tell you my story! So here we go!

About 4-5 months ago I purchased a new motherboard that was barely being released called the Abit AT7 Max. This mobo was to be the first of many parts to my new system. I then bought an Enermax dual fan 430 Watt power supply, 512mbs of 2700 DDR memory, Rounded IDE Cables, Amd Althon XP +2200, HC01 Heat pipe by coolermaster, and a CoolerMaster ATC-201 Case.

It all arrives, so I procede to dismantle my old Pentium 3 866. I take the 40 Gig hard drive, the Geforce 2 Ti, the CD-RW, and the floppy from it. I then plug everything and install all the hardware and finally finish the building project.

I turn it on......nothing. I was frusterated so I tried checking everything over agian and re checking. Again.....nothing. I tried my friends Athlon XP 1700 with little trouble, but for some reason looking at the temp's and monitoring that the motherboard has crashes the system. I send the CPU back thinking my XP 2200 was faulty. It comes back about 3 months later and I try again.....NOTHING!

So I go out to Fry's and buy a Albatron KX+400 KT333 Mobo and take it home to try it out. BINGO! It works!

Now here's how I ended up here....

I put the Windows XP Pro cd in the cd-rom and it loads up and asks me if I would like to format which partition (as I have a c: which is 30 gigs, and a D: which is 10 gigs for stuff to save if I format) so I choose C: and it then tells me that my Hard drive is corrupt and that it cannot install windows XP. I tried it 5 more times all of which I had to wait for the format....nothing!

I then pull out my old Windows 98 SE cd and BOOM, it loads up perfect! What in the?! So I go...Ok im gonna cheat the system and try to upgrade once i get 98 on there....it starts working and then boom "Your hard drive is corrupted". How could this be? Im using it right now, and 98 SE is working fine. But this hard drive will no longer let me use XP Pro.

Any ideas?

Also, look at the picture, is my ram running at the full speed of 2700 DDR?

originel · 10-07-2002, 07:57 PM

hmmm, sounds interesting. have you tried repartitioning your hard drive? it sounds like to me that for whatever reason NT isnt liking your current partition, so it thinks your hd is messed up. I think that repartitioning your hd would help. also, have you ran scandisk and defrag? they might also help

Skywalker[TSG] · 10-07-2002, 08:01 PM

Hmmm 351mhz does seem a bit fast
but fast is always good

PC2700 =333mhz ithink

Skywalker[TSG] · 10-07-2002, 08:01 PM

Also did you update the bios on the Abit board?

the 2200 is a T-bred and you might have to do that.

thekingofpain · 10-07-2002, 08:05 PM

Ive had a similar situation---did a govt wipe to for sure clean the known good hdd, wouldnt work, did the 98 install YES it works! wipe, I want XP on this system---installed the OS via a diff system and swapped the driverless drive in---still no go---swapped hdd and SUCCESS! arggghhh!

Also did the upgrade path---no go-----

---------> can ya fix yer pix?
---ooops working now...

virgule · 10-07-2002, 08:07 PM

I had this exact problem with a similar combination of EnerMax 650 P/S and Abit K-7 mobo. Don't know if my solution will work for you, but here is what the fix was for me.

There is a small power supply pigtail plug that needs to be plugged into the Abit mobo as a P/S fan monitor. It's a very tiny 3-pin plug and looks like it can be ignored. When this is not plugged into the Abit, the mobo refuses to turn on. It drove me crazy for the longest time, as I too swapped out dozens of parts to no avail.

Check the Abit owners manual. The header is near the CPU, three pins standing there with nothing to do. If it's not connected to your EnerMax, the board will not turn on.

SupraGreen · 10-07-2002, 08:29 PM

Wow I love this forum! Great responses!

I think that first idea about re-creating a single partition, then perhaps a format and try that out. Im gonna back up everything on a disk first if im gonna try that. But for now it works.

Oh Yeah that T-Bred thing is correct, I did update my mobo's bios to the latest revision to no avail! Very strange, but then I found about 10 sites that have articles that the Abit AT7 mobo, WHEN being shipped, the first 1000 mobo's had Onboard audio, LAN, and even operation problems...i bought mine early so I think it's 1 of those 1000. =( my luck eh?

Im gonna send in my abit mobo and get it fixed so i can buy a new 2800 chip =)!!

Also do any of you own a Logitech Optical mouse? Blue/Red or regular? I bought a Logitech Navigator (looks like Itouch) and noticed a conflict where it would change the sensitivity of my mouse. Strange that it should happen so i tried it on 2 other systems that had winxp and the same problem occured. There was no actual conflict, it just happend. both running usb, and even switched to PS2 with no fix.

Ex: Change your mouse settings to full speed, no acceleration with logitech mouse drivers, then restart keep it set up or whatever...then..........turn off computer, plug in keyboard and when you start up and configure/install drivers, you will see your mouse mess up. Strange logitech problem.

1 last thing: My cpu was running at 48C, and system was 45C, im in california and it's 90 degrees outside and who knows inside..but i hope those temps are safe =)

Skywalker[TSG] · 10-07-2002, 08:30 PM

I dont own that mouse but it would be a good idea to start a new thread about that issue.

Will give ya more replies

Oh and those temps seem just fine to me

SupraGreen · 10-07-2002, 08:40 PM

LoL, also my case LED lights wont light up and YES I have tried both ways to switch them in...only 2 possible..right and wrong. Is there a way to determine if they shipped bad led's or if they could be replaced?

Cook_N · 10-09-2002, 10:12 PM

I have had similar problems loading os and finally started low level fromating my hdd ( 0 filling ) since then I have not had a os that wouldn't load.