cant boot up

[slaird]

OK, I'm using a AMD 1600, ASUS A7V333 w/ Raid, Antec 330 True Power, Abit GeF3, Raid 80 GB hard drives, 768 MB DDR333. Everything else is not plugged in.

My power supply recently went out and I put in a generic 310 W supply while waiting for my new one to come back on warranty. During this time, I also moved my computer to a little cubicle (so temperature might have gone up a little). It worked for about a week and then one morning I woke up and there was no video at all, not even on Bios Setup.

I tried another AGP card, I got video but couldn't run through the windows setup without the computer restarting (no error message). Then I tried a PCI Vidoe card (OLD) and it kind of worked. It would boot up in safe mode and but would periodically just turn off and start over.

I also noted that with my 128MB card, sometimes my CPU fan wouldn't turn on. And nothing would happen.

I received my new power supply (from warranty) and the same things happens, except now my AGP 128MB card will work and lets me get halfway through the Windows setup process before the computer just starts over.

Any ideas? Is it the motherboard, processor, CPU fan??? I appreciate it.

[saladbarkid]

Does it quickly blue screen then shut off?

I'm thinkin' RAM

[Dj-Icer]

Some possibilities but the most common, your RAM may have a problem.

I would advise you should take it out and rub it to clean it. Rub it with a rubber or cloth on the copper grill. Then place it back again when you're satisfied.

2nd, could be ur power supply

[slaird]

Thanks for the ideas.

No blue screen, just a click and then restart.

I'll try the suggestions with the RAM.

The power supply? Could be, just the one in there now is an ANTEC True Power 330W (which I hear usually runs higher than 330W). Plus the same type of power supply was in there for a year and a half and ran 3 hard drives, cd writer, dvd player, 4 fans and 128MB AGP. Now I don't even have half of that hooked up. It shouldn't be the power supply, but I could have received a lemon the second time. I'll keep it in mind though.

I'll also check out the RAM and keep you all posted. Thanks so much.

PS There was a ton of dust in the unit before I cleaned it.

Can we rule out CPU because it will boot up halfway?

[Martoch]

My quick thoughts...

Make sure 3 more times that everything is seated properly.
Reset the CMOS.
Put in 1 stick of RAM as opposed to all 768MB.
Take out your RAID arrangement and put in a single master HD on the primary IDE channel.

[skygate]

What reason is there for resetting the cmos, if he can start the computer with the power button. I use the insert key to reset the computer, how is that different than the cmos. I thought it was when it would not even power up, then you would have to do that. And is resetting cmos equivalent to fail safe defaults?

[slaird]

OK, I have done everything but take out the RAID arrangement. The new status is that I can boot up into Safe Mode and stay there, no problem.

I have taken out all fans (except for CPU fan), floppies, cd-roms.

I have turned off all services except for Microsoft related services and have disabled all drivers except for CPU, Raid HD's, keyboard, mouse.

I have tried one stick of memory, switching and trying again.
I retried PCI video.

Still no matter what I receive an error on booting Windows Normal. I turned off automatic restart on error and I DO GET A BLUE SCREEN with error message. It is a 00000007E message which is supposed to hint toward a hardware driver problem.
Also, since it can boot into safe mode, that hints to me that I do not a physical component problem. Is this correct?

I have done everything except take out my RAID controlled drives. I really don't want to do that so if anyone has a suggestion, please let me know.

Can I delete the drivers for RAID controller under safe mode and let it boot up in normal mode and reinstall them ???

[John Prophet]

Is it raid 0 or raid 1?

[slaird]

raid 0 I think? It is striped.

[John Prophet]

Raid 1 is striped, raid 0 is "mirrored".

I would think you have to be more careful with the striped array, cuz each drive has half the info on it, I am not sure how youd go about "breaking" the raid array without losing the data. Do you have anyway to back the drive up..like norton ghost?