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Okay, so I"m writing from my sister's computer because my computer locks up again for the first time in about a month. I have to manually reset the machine. It then happens again after reboot and when I tried to load my saved game in Neverwinter nights 2. Now when I power the computer up, the PC speaker makes this high pitched beeeeeep.......beeeeeeep.....beeeeep until I shut it off. Eventually I disconnect everything including the Hard Drives from the motherboard, and I've cleared the CMOS using the jumper but no good. I keep getting a beeep....beeep ...beeep. Is my computer toast? Any suggestions as to how I might fix this? I'm at a loss. I'm not sure what caused it other than hitting the reset button too many times and I"m not sure if I can salvage the my PC. I definitely can't replace it. I'm broke. This sucks. I've had nothing but trouble with this PC for three months and now it seems to really flat out die on me. Any help would be greatly appreciated.

Keep everything disconnected, reconnect one at a time starting with the processor then memory then your cards (one at a time) then HDD's until one of them give you the beep code (you must shutdown everytime after each piece of Hardware you connect, kinda like a trail of breadcrumbs). If it is beeping even after all the disconnects then it's got to be the motherboard. If it is a home built box then go to the motherboard makers website and see if you can find the beep code errors, if it is pre-built then go to the makers website. Thats about it really, its not that hard just got to take some time to go thru the numbers.

DA

Thanks DA.

Yeah, when I woke up this morning. I did exactly that process and got to POST. I'm now having a problem with the boot sequence/HDD. My MOBO can handle both IDE and SATA and I think it's causing quite a conflict. The manual says that the "first hard drive should always be connected to IDE1". Here's the problem: I have one IDE drive and one SATA. The SATA is my primary drive. I've disconnected the IDE drive entirely as I believe the two on the same board is what caused the problem in the first place. There is nothing plugged into IDE 1 right now. I had teh CD/DVD rom drives in there at first, but when I got an error I put them on IDE 2. The SATA is registering as the master drive on it's plug. It is the HD hooked up and in the BIOS I've set the boot sequence to boot the HD first and the boot sequence recognizes the HD. NO JOY. It keeps stopping during boot to register that the IDE ports have failed and that while it recognizes the SATA drive it too fails.

Now what? any suggestions from anyone would be helpful. I really need this comp for both work and play. Sigh.

Sounds like a new motherboard to me, but I really couldn't tell you since I am not there. Give more intel (you confused the hell out of me).

DA

I also suggest looking up the beep codes for your MB. Write down the exact number of beeps and see what the beep code means; they are usually pretty accurate. If the MB has both IDE and SATA connectors, it should be able to utilize both without any problems.

From everything you have been describing prior to this and now, it sounds like the MB is malfunctioning. What is the Make and Model number of your MB?

do you have the ide drives on autodetect in the bios, or set manually? they should be autodetect.

if you have resolved the beeping and are now just looking at the ide error, remove all ide devices for now just to see if you can get the sata drive to boot.

what is the exact ide error code?

Ok so having ripped the board down to bare bones, I started with the RAM and worked my way up. This time I configured the board as follows:

IDE 1 Master CD/ROM Slave DVD RAM
IDE 2 Slave IDE HD
IDE channel 2 Master- Primary HD

You'll note that I've even set the storage HD as a slave on the second channel in hopes of avoiding further conflict. I think having this HD originally on Master Channel 1 was causing a conflict. Everything now POSTs properly. I had to do a little bit of research but it should be okay now. I've run scans on both HDs and they appear to be in good working order. If I have any further trouble, I'll just rip the second HD out and house it in an external case. I use the jumper to clear the CMOS at the beginning of this process. I hope that takes care of it. Thanks for your suggestions guys, they helped a lot. At least I knew I was on the right track.

Yep , I Called It! It was a hardware problem all along. Eat my dust Dr. Mckay. =p

i thought you said one of the drives was SATA? it can not go onto an ide channel.

glad it is resolved though.

Yes. it is SATA. It is set on IDE Channel 2 Master. My Bios recognizes the SATA on the IDE channels for some reason. Don't ask me why, but the serial code for the HD is located on that channel, big as life. Still, when I load up windows to desktop, the primary HD appears as a USB like device. That is to say, there is a green arrow in the system tray that you can click on to disconnect the device??!!! weird. Everything appears to work, but if this sounds weird and you got any suggestions please let me know.

THanks.

so what is your primary drive? the ide that is set to slave on primary ide channel? or the sata that is set to master on secondary ide channel?

if it is the sata drive that is showing up as removable, there may be a bios setting that allows it to be removable and sata is hot swappable by nature. i would not worry about it if it is not obvious.

IDE Primary........CD/ROM
IDE Slave...........DVD

IDE Secondary Master........none
IDE Secondary Slave..........IDE HD

IDE Channel 2 Master..........SATA
IDE Channel 3 Master..........none

The SATA Drive is the one that is showing up as removable. No, it's not to obvious, but if you see something wrong in my configuration here let me know.

I use my master drive as the primary

I use the slave drive as the Secondary load up.

I use my CD/ROM drive as the third load up ( if optional)

Yes I disable my floppy drive , for I do not ever use it.

This next part might be a little more for our onlookers rather than yourself since we have so many hits per day , I thought I would explain it with a little more clarity. That said: When I want to reformat , I go into BIOS and change the load up configuration to load CD/ROM first. With Windows in the CD/ROM Drive , it will ask me push a key to load from the CD/ROM. Then it walks me through asking me if I want to reload my OS , Repair it , or Replaced it totally , or reformat and then load windows on a specific drive. That’s is the best way to do it. Otherwise you might reformat a different drive , as I have done in the past and was totally unhappy about losing all my back up files and games at that point. I was pissed. Yes... So I’ll never again use my OS to reformat. Only from boot up for now on.

Anyways that my story. SATA sounds like Christmas if you add an “ N “ to it , and I never saw the benefit of using it. That’s more up Steels alley or DA. I also think that using SATA is old school? Are you still using one of them old Mother boards with an AGP Graphics slot? God man! Make the change already... Everyone else has PCI-E. It’s the latest thing , and you’ll need one sooner or later seeing how all the latest PC graphics cards are now engineered for PCI-E slot. I got my PCI-E board for only $50 at new egg. I used my old memory AND my old CPU. It was hard to find , but I finally found an affordable upgrade that makes sense.

Yeah there are some distinct advantages, or so I'm told, of using SATA over IDE but I couldn't tell you off the top of my head what they are. Bottom line, my BIOS does not allow me, or the very least I don't know how, to assign the SATA drive to my IDE Primary channel. THe SATA, I"m sure you're well aware, plugs into its own specific spots on the motherboard.

Nope, I see no reason to upgrade until further computer operations are untenable.

Untenable? You mean unsustainable or flawed. ( it’s the same. ) As you have had this problem for over a year now. Maybe longer?... I would suspect that your having a hard time justifying the expense for a simple upgrade. I’m definitely sure the upgrade wont sink your wallet if you shop wisely. Aye , the SATA fits into a PC slot on your case , then plugs into your main board. Yawn …. Kind of old fashion don’t you think?



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Memory:

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Unless you fell content with your old setup that’s been bugging out lately I’d suggest setting aside a few bucks for an upgrade that shouldn’t cost allot. It’s mostly up to you to find a newer board that will fit your old Ram and CPU . Ram shouldn’t be a important decision when upgrading , because the CPU always cost more. Newer ram is cheap , like $10 to $15 for a stick of DDRII 1GB. It’s the graphics card you’ll want to spend more on , but those are cheap too nowadays. If you buy remanufactured , you can always send it back for an exchange or a different type. I’ve had my SAPPARE ATI 1650 card for over year. Nope.. I still haven’t reloaded Lost Planet to check it out. I guess I’ve been preoccupied with life and general. And we’ve got a Pittsburgh game coming up this Sunday! Woot!

I thought I would give you guys a little more info on SATA vs. IDE so you can make sure your telling grifter which direction to go in. SATA is the new standard and IDE will soon (if not already and it just don't know it yet) move to legacy system stuff (I just setup a 2K3 Server with Exchange 2K3 for OJT purposes in my pursuit of a better paying job that is strictly IDE) but at work I was for a long time using a mixture of SATA and IDE of course the SATA was primary and the IDE was slave. So SATA is the way to go with PCI-E and pretty soon with the DUAL CORE processors and QUAD's that we will start seeing on Video Cards PCI-E will be obsolete to take advantage of the computing speed (Just a hunch). Here is the link for you guys to read up on SATA http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SATA

DA

Yeah, thanks DA. Still, assuming all my problems are now resolved, and they should be now that I've rerouted the way I've wired stuff up in the box and I have a clean CMOS. I'm fairly content with my system for the time being. meh.

Grif you really need to think about investing in either a new box or new hardware, your SATA drive showing up on an IDE Channel in my mind is a red flag that pops up and you should contact your MB manufacturer and find out what that could mean. If I were to see that in a business production setting I would be looking to upgrade the hardware and keep moving (it would not be cost effective for me to research it, I have better things to do with eight hours in a day), now if more problems prop up then I guess then I would have no choice but troubleshoot what is going on or just junk the PC and get a new one.

DA

wow. not trying to be an ass guys, but some of these terms being thrown around in this thread are way off.
-sata has nothing to do with pci-e.
-ide is the older standard
-sata is the newer standard
-ide drives are no longer being made, you may find new old stock but they are no longer being made
-some older mainboards treated sata as an ide channel for legacy purposes due to drivers not being natively available for the sata ahci protocol - many still have the ability to toggle the sata drives as being legacy/ide or ahci/enhanced
-for the home user you will generally see absolutely zero advantage in ide vs sata, except sata may be easier to set up as it is one drive per connector, no master slave stuff
-although, with sata being the newer technology the newer, faster drives are of course sata - but that is actually not related to the interface
-now with sata '2', you will indeed see an advantage over ide and sata 1 prototcol, but that is only on newer mainboards
-Grif's sata drive showing up as an ide drive is no concern, it is o.k. that is just the way the mainboard manufacturer created the bios and displays the drives
-ide on a server, really? (yes, it is definitely o.k. for testing, messing around but do not do it for a server you are going to put into any kind of production without very careful consideration)
-to properly refer to boot order, that is precisely what it is called - boot order - not load up
-the sata drive on Grif's computer will not ever be able to be on the primary or secondary ide channel. it is not physically able to - it has a sata connector. channel 2 is fine, and since it is sata it has to be the 'master' as there is only one sata device allowed on that channel, also remember there are no master slave settings. calling the sata channel IDE channle 2 and 3 is simply the simpleton way of saying sata channel 1 and 2 (or 0 and 1) - the board manufacturer just did not do a good job of naming things. could have been an english to chinese translation thing too.
-sata does not go into a pc slot. i do not even know what a pc slot is. terminology misnomer there
-pci-e is not going to be obsolete. it is the newest bus standard and version 2 has just been released. twice the bandwidth of pci-e version 1, pci-e is much more flexible and stable than the older bus standards.

Steel come on man, I know that it is strictly for training. Its an old box that I am using for OJT with Exchange Server 2003. I did mispeak or did not clarify myself by running from SATA to PCI-E, that was my fault and take full responsibilty for that.

I will be surprised if PCI-E 1 or 2 will beable to handle the dual and or quad processors I anticipate that will be put on Video Cards with tons more memory. Its the nature of the PC Clone (As soon as we get used to something more than likely here comes something to replace it). Take USB 1.1 and 2, pretty soon FireWire will replace it for data transfer and who know's with the 3GB and 6GB SATA speeds they very well may add a SATA expansion for external connections. I did forget about how legacy handles SATA drives and quite frankly I never checked with my work computer but I am almost certain my SATA drive never showed up as a removeable drive but again I never paid attention.

DA