Pulling my hair out and starting to weep..

[madmanbmw]

Please if you have taken the time to click on the message give me any advice you can, and thanks for the help in advance.

Guys I dont know what is going wrong. I have built a dozen systems, all without much problem but now that I build one for myself everything goes wrong. Here is the deal. I was trying to put together a power hog but something has gone wrong. Here are the specs to the system.

Antec File Server
Antec 300w P/S
AMD Retail 1.33 GHZ (overclocked to 1.47 but is not oc now)
IWill KA266-R Mobo
1.44 MB Floppy
512 MB Crucial RAM DDR PC 2100
IBM 40 Gb 7200 RPM (RAID)
IBM 40 Gb 7200 RPM (RAID)
Plextor 16x10x40 CDRW
Toshiba 16x DVD
ATI ALL N WONDER RADEON DDR
TURTLE Beach Sound Card
CNETT Win Modem
NetGear Network Card
4 Case Fans
1 GPU FAN
1 Retail Processor Fan
18.1" Sony Sdm-81 TFT
Klipsch 2.1 speakers
Longitech Wireless Key Board and Mouse

Ok, here is the story. Upon first install one of my HDD's was bad so I ordered a new one. I set up the system while I waited for the new drive to be shipped and ran it (without raid) and it was fine, however rairly it wouldn't boot, and I would always get "cpu changed" bios errors.
Well newegg.com overnighted me a new hard drive and I installed it using raid 0 64k stripes. After installing Windows 2000 I began to install all my drivers and my pci cards and such. One by one, restarting often and taking it slow. After a while I got to where I would have to hit the power button three times before it would POST. It would always power on but only POST about half the time.
Everynow and then I would get problems installing and I probably formatted twice before I got it to install everything smoothly. Lockups still were pretty common when running a lot of software. Well now everything was fine except for my booting problem and my "cpu changed" errors. However I would still get lockups in windows kind of often. The only thing left I had to install was a network card. Do to unforseen factors I had to switch my sound card and modem to fit the network card in. The system then booted and started reinstalling all kinds of drivers and began giving me blue screens. It would also give me a blue screen everytime I tried to run Adaptec DirectCD. So I unistalled and resintalled a few apps and drivers and everything seemed ok. Next my DVD player wouldnt play DvDs and my ATI media player thing would lock up when I put a DVD in, but everything else was fine. I switched dvd players but that wasnt the problem. So I said screw it. Pulled everything but the All in Wonder, and the bare parts I needed to have to run the system. I formatted and reinstalled win 2k for about the third or fourth time. This time I just basic drivers on there and the ATI dvd player. I think unplugged my HDDs from the power supply and hooked up a 200 watt power supply to the drives and also hooked it up to one cdrom. That way I would take the strain off the other 300watt power supply. The system still appears to have booting problems and still locks up on trying to play dvds and tells me the drive is not accessable. The DvD drive will read cd's find and install programs fine, but when I put a dvd in it locks up (or runs very slow).
My question is this. Could this all be cause by a faulty power supply or not enough power to the system or do I have some problems with my Iwill mobo? I need to figure this out soon cause mwave and newegg dont like to replace parts after a few weeks, and I dont want to mess with the manufacturer.
If I can clarify anything in anyway just ask. Thanks for reading and for your help.

Madison
mmcmajor@apex.net

 

[Guest]

Sounds like a mobo problem to me. Perhaps you have another lying around somewhere? Try it.

 

[shuke]

Strip down your system to minimum. Goto http://www.tweakfiles.com and click on DIAGNOSTIC on top left-hand corner. On the next page look for AMIDIAG. Click and download this test program. Copy this to a floppy. Boot your system in Dos and run this program AMIDIAG.EXE for dos. It will install the diagnostic program on C: drive. Go the the installed location and run AMIDIAG.EXE. This will test your system. If everything is ok, leave your system on for a while and retest. This will make sure, heat is not the issue here.

Also, it would be wise to disassemble and reassemble your PC. This time put in extra effort to make sure that there is no shorting. Reseat the cpu and make sure that the HSF lies flat and not angled.

It don't come easy.......not always.

 

[jlanka]

Agreed on the mobo possibility.

Question: Any BIOS updates on this board, and if so did you install them?

<i>It's always the one thing you never suspected.</i>

 

[madmanbmw]

Thanks for the advice. I think I have two problems here.

1st - power suppy

Not that big of a deal, I will just get a larger one and use two for now. My boot problem seems to be realted the the psu.

2nd - RAID and w2k

I grabbed an old 3 gig hdd with win 98 on it and installed my drivers for my hardware and everything is running great - dvds are playing and cd burner sofware is running. So something has to go here. I really enjoy using the RAID configuration. The performance that it has given me is second to none and I have recieved very high marks in SiSoft. However what good is it if half my system is screwed. I can install win2k and my modem then download SP2 but I dont have the copy with SP2 Streamlined. I dont know exactly what to do. The mobo has the Ali Magik1 Chipset. I guess I could try to update the bios and get the newest RAID bios and drivers then try a reinstall and add SP2. Or I guess I could just say screw the RAID and use my two 40's as seperate drives. When I install my drivers from the CD that came with the mobo it switches my Toshiba DVD and Plextor 16x to scsi devices (that is how windows sees them) and I am not sure why. I dont know what to do. Any advice would be appreciated.

Thanks

Madison
mmcmajor@apex.net

 

[Guest]

Do not install the Adaptec software. This will kill most Win 2000 boxes so bad they will have to be completly re-formatted. Their might be newer Adaptec software that works but I am not sure. I belive it is the Direct CD(is that software made by Roxie? ) program that is at fault.

 

[Ron_Jeremy]

Yeah, I was thinking power supply too. BTW, I'd personally junk that NIC if I had one. With your hardware/OS combo, it's gonna give you problems.

Cheers,

Ron_Jeremy

If you loan a friend $20 & never see them again, it was worth it.

 

[Crashman]

I think it's a power issue. Taking off drives only affects the 12v line, it does not help the 3.3v line which seems to be the most overstressed in faster AMD systems.

Cast not thine pearls before the swine

 

[Guest]

To add to the consensus, I'd say it was definitely the PSU. With 2 HD, and a load of CD's and stuff, I'd look at at least 400W. One of those Enermax 450W ones would be enough.

Oh, and (prejudice mode engaged) throw that internal modem away. Nowadays perfectly usable external ones are only a few pounds more, and don't need a kernel-mode driver to work. So your system isn't beholden to some dodgy modem driver.

 

[Guest]

hey madman,

sorry about your troubles, amigo. been there many times, myself. a couple of things: one, i have to disagree with my brothers here for once. i dont think its a power issue (although more couldnt hurt). from your description of running win 98 from the 3 gig drive without problems, i would have to say it sounds like a driver/os problem with win 2k. If it was a PSU problem, it would have manifested itself in win 98 as well.

Having said that, what you need to do is slowly build your system one part at a time, testing for stability. when you find the culprit (you will, if patient) then address the issue with driver updates or get a new part. for now, start with the basics: vid card, mem, cpu, one hard drive (no RAID to start with). load the basic drivers needed, as well as all updates for win 2k including sp 2! then test it for stability thoroughly. if it runs well, add another component, etc. my gut tells me that its either your ati card (you are using the win 2000 drivers and not win 98, right?), but that could be because i had a lot of trouble with ati AIW radeon recently with win 2k. Also, i suspect your RAID card. leave it out for now....

One thing about the raid card: if you find that the card is not working well with your win 2k rig, you can always set up software RAID in win 2k. no as fast, but better than nothing!

ignore everything i say

 

[Guest]

one other thing: what version of Adaptec direct cd are you running?

ignore everything i say

 

[Ncogneto]

If he leaves out the raid card on the intial install he will have to start all over agian when he decides to go with raid. the obvious first step woth be to install win98 with the raid card and test it that way.

A little bit of knowledge is a dangerous thing!

 

[madmanbmw]

Ok guys I may be making some progress. I put just the vid card in and the two harddrives and my dvd and burner. I then installed RAID and Win 2k. After I got it running I installed my win modem.

(BTW I will be on a network in a month, school, so I only bought this modem to use for a few weeks, that is why I have a win modem. It is cheap but seems to work ok)

After I installed the modem (before I loaded in video drivers) I installed all the windows updates from the net and SP2. I then loaded the ati drivers and cd burning drivers. So far no problems.

Also, my RAID is onboard (ka266-R ali magik) so in essence I cannot take out my RAID card. I really want to keep the RAID feature so I do not want to not use it unless I absolutely have to.

The only problem I have right now is the boot problem. Mostly it is when I hit restart. The screen goes black but no reboot, I have to turn it off then on again and it gives me the "processor speed change" error. I hit F1 and continue. I am thinking thoes might be power supply.

Thanks for all your help. If you have anymore ideas please post them. I will continue to install my pci cards and drivers and will continually return here to post my progress.

Thanks guys

Madison
mmcmajor@apex.net

 

[jlanka]

What RAID controller is that? Highpoint?

<i>It's always the one thing you never suspected.</i>

 

[Guest]

Well, I don't have experience of your mobo (but I do with the Ali MagiK), but I have just been having similar problems (not identical), and routed it down to not having a Jumper on the CPU VID (Voltage ID) connectors, so that it was niether enabled nor disabled! SO my suggestion is to check absolutely everything on the mobo, that may require jumpers related to CU settings. Frequencies, Voltages, Multipliers...make sure that they are all definately o.k.

Just my tuppence worth.


Topher Bear

Don't wait for tomorrow! Live for Today!

 

[Guest]

Agreed! only time I got a blue screen in Win 2k was w/ Adaptec EZ CD creator. Had to go to safe mode and rid it.