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Thread: wierd hardware problem

  1. #1

    Question wierd hardware problem

    Sorry if this is wrong forum, but.. my new box is f*ing me around, i've got dual boot XP pro and redhat 7 running, and the other day XP locked up on me, so i thought - ok, windows does this sort of shyte - restarted, and it failed to detect _any_ drives on startup. I turned it off, went for a cigarette, came back, turned it on and it worked. Then it did the same thing today. I assume a hadware problem because niether redhat or windoze would boot after the crash. Since i've only had the machine for a month or so, and it's been flawless, i doubt physical damage/wear+tear. I did assemble it myself so maybe there is a chance of some build mistake that could cause this deterioration? doubt it though... thanx for any help.

  2. #2
    Although I dont have much experience with running those 2 OS together.
    My hunch is the 2 OSes are fighting for the boot loader and do not cohabitate together well.........I have heard you can tweak the Linux loader (LILO) to not fight with the MS OS.
    If XP is like the previous MS OSes they want total control of the disk.

    Or ....as you have said it could be a hardware failure. MB, Controler, harddisk etc.
    Now finding which piece is the fun part.........more info would be needed.

    HTHs
    GG

  3. #3
    Shadow Programmer mmelby's Avatar
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    The fact that you can leave it for a while and come back and it works tells me it is probably a hard drive harware problem. Is it an IDE hard drive? Do you have another drive you can test with?
    Work... Some days it's just not worth chewing through the restraints...

  4. #4
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    It sounds a bit like an issue with something overheating... do you have any fans that arent working? or are the vents covered up or something?

    Do you have 2 drives right on top of each other with no ventilation?

  5. #5
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    (".) huh?

    greetings,
    how far in the boot process did you get? did it do a POST, did it check all the ram, what was the error message, if any, was there a blank floppy in the drive ?
    if it was overheating...how long had you the computer on before it went south? if it was 15mins, this probably isn't the case.
    are you using a third party bootloader? which OS was installed first?

    what IchNiSan said
    what mmelby said
    - how many drives do you have, if 1, whats the partitioning scheme?
    what gypsygeek said
    - relates to number of disks, bootloader, 3rd party loader s/ware...

    personally i would _guess_ that there is a loose connector in the box somewhere. just make sure everything is connected up real good...
    Hmm...theres something a little peculiar here. Oh i see what it is! the sentence is talking about itself! do you see that? what do you mean? sentences can\'t talk! No, but they REFER to things, and this one refers directly-unambigeously-unmistakably-to the very sentence which it is!

  6. #6
    I also run a multi-boot computer. One parition for Windows ME, another with XP, and another with Redhat Linux 7.2 I think its the bootloader, like gypsygeek said. It also did it to me, the samething. I wound up just getting rid of redhat, because XP just kept messing up and everything. I got rid of it and now it works perfectly.

  7. #7
    firstly, thanks for all the response.. ok, Redhat and XP are on two seperate 80gb IDE disks, the linux disk is master so on bootup i get the linux boot loader ( GRUB ) menu to choose the OS to load, this has worked well so far so i doubt conflicting OSs on startup. to "(V)/\><" - I got past memory check but no drives were detected, and no, there is no loose connections or obviously broken hardware. to IchNiSan - i think yor idea sounds most feasable since i do tend to leave the machine on almost constantly.. are modern IDE drives prone to overheating? could this explain the intermittent performance of the machine? the drives are indeed directly on top of eachother but there is a fan close to them.. maybe i should buy an old freezer, put the box in that and crank it up to 3GHz :-)

  8. #8
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    if the drives are 7200 RPM ATA's you will have a heat problem if they are too close together as there will be no air circulation anyway because there is not enough space for adequate circulation in the first place

    seems very weird though for 2 new drives to behave like this, has the weather there been unusually warm lately or something?
    also ive heard from plenty of people that XP and Linux can have some very nasty problems if they are dual booted and things aren't set up exactly, people have had problems with lost boot sectors and therefore an unbootable system, im not sure if a severley corrupted boot sector or mbr can cause this sort of problem but the point of the drives not being detected points to some sort of hardware related problem, just realised that it could be how your drives are jumpered...

    ie master and slave, cable select etc, one of my drives wouldnt detect on my new system because it was inprolerly jumpered or on the wrong part of my IDE cable, for it to work properly the bootable drive needed to be on the very end of my cable and then everything was fine.

  9. #9
    mrleachy -
    thanx for yor advice, my drives are set up correctly and jumpers are as i want them - with the Redhat drive as master and then using the linux boot loader to select XP if i want it. This configuration has worked with no problems. I suspect that any boot sector probs related to the dual boot configuration would be unlikely to cause an _intermittent_ booting problem, more likely a refusal to load one or other OS consistantly... i do have plenty of room in the tower case so i will try putting some space between the drives and getting another fan in there. As for the weather - i'm in London mate, and i'm freezing my nuts off :-)

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