Possible bad mobo need advice

[dalek]

I have a friend's computer, she's 14 and broke what's new, and her puter wouldn't boot anymore. I went over and tried to boot from floppy, wouldn't let me into the hard drive. I tried to reinstall XP. No luck. 'unable to format drive' or something. I put in another drive, my old spare 2.5G, and got the same error. I took her old drive and put in my system and BIOS didn't like it. It said "NONE WD400" and would not access it. I don't use windows, see below, so I installed Linux to see what was up. I got Mandrake on it, my drive not hers, and when it rebooted the "/home" partition was dead. No data, no nothing. I was in command line too. It seems to have problems when it gets further out. I also noticed that the monitor displays some wierd stuff sometimes. Can't explain what it looks like, just wierd!
I cannot get any hard drive to work right in this system. It won't work with windows 98 either. It will boot fine from a CD or Floppy. I changed the data cable and switched the power cable for the hard drive for good measure and still the same old message.
The system has a AOPEN AK73 mobo and AMD 1200 CPU. I cleared the CMOS just in case. I think the mobo has bad controller possibly caused by the original drive. I can't think of anything else to try. I also blew out a little dust. That wasn't to bad though.

Anybody have more ideas?

Thanks much!!

:D :D :D :confused:

[michaelk]

How are the jumpers configured on the drives? If using cs try switching to master.

It might be a bad controller, try switching from the 1st controller to the 2nd controller. Be sure to set the BIOS to auto for all of the channels.

[dalek]

I'll check the jumpers again. I set it to master before I went over. I will also try the other controller. I hadn't thought/tried that one. Thanks! Oh, I already set it to auto. I did that first thing to check the old drive. Her system wouldn't see the drive at all. It just said 'NONE'.

Back later . . . . . . .

Thanks much. I'm diving into the puter again.

:D :D :D :D :D

[dalek]

I changed to the other controller. It did the same thing. Wierd stuff. I'm going to put the hard drive in another system and see if it works then. If it does, great. If not, that thing messed up my drive. :mad: :mad:
When I was trying to install win 98 and it got to the format part and gave the error 'run-time error R6003' then it locked up.

That was a good thing to try though. Any ideas on why it still didn't work. It passes the memory test. I guess the CPU is OK? Strange stuff . . .

Thanks

:D :D :D

[hard candy]

Whar type of drive is it? I know Maxtor has a download that will run from floppy called Max**something that will test your drive and give the error codes so that you can call and see what the error is. Look in the support section on their web site- I think it may only work on Maxtors. Or you can use it to low level format the drive. I'm sure the other mfg's have something similiar. If, not Google for a hard drive testing program.
Also, are the interfaces for your machine and hers the same speed, i.e not trying to run a ATA 66 on a ATA 133 interface. (I'm not sure if that would make a diffirence).
Your friends drive probably has some bad blocks on it- but I'm confused, did you install Mandrake on your old 2.5 G drive in whose computer or your drive that was already in your computer or her drive while it was in your computer or her computer? And where is her drive right now?
And one simple thing learned from experience- there's no way the IDE cables are being connected upside down, right?

[dalek]

The original drive, 40GB, is dead. It doesn't work in her system or in mine. Her BIOS will not recognize the drive at all and my system will recognize it but says "NONE WD400" in the autodetect. It is not listed when you try to boot however. I'm pretty sure her original drive is dead.
The 2.5G drive is a Samsung that I took out of my other system. I know it was good before going into her system.
Her mobo supports whatever the drive can go at as for as the ATA 66 or ATA 133 goes and her BIOS recognizes it with no problem.
Yes, I was trying to install Linux on the 2.5G drive, my old drive that should work. I can't access the original drive with anything.
The cables are OK. I don't use the ones that are not pinned or indexed in some way. I always make sure of that because I burned out a $600 or $700 drive once doing that. Yep, that was back when drives were expensive. I think it was a 10MB or so.
I'm about to put the 2.5G drive back into MY system to see how it does. If it works, there is not much left but the mobo. I also e-mailed AOPEN for there advice.
Any more ideas or questions are welcome.

Thanks much hard candy. Think of anything else????

:D :D :D :D

[psi42]

Originally posted by hard candy
Whar type of drive is it? I know Maxtor has a download that will run from floppy called Max**something that will test your drive and give the error codes so that you can call and see what the error is. Look in the support section on their web site- I think it may only work on Maxtors. Or you can use it to low level format the drive.

Have you tried that program (Maxblast 3)? It might work, I think it works with your hard drives more or less independently of the BIOS...however that works. Of course, it did destroy my MBR once, but that's all in the past.:)

I have used it with non-maxtor drives, it gives you a warning about it but it still works.

~psi42

[dalek]

I put the little 2.5GB drive back into my old system. The only error I got is that it could not read the partition table. After that it installed fine. After that I copied files over to the /home partition, the one that failed in her system, and filled it up to within a few hundred Kb. No errors. So my hard drive is OK even though it won't work in her system.
I pretty sure the mobo is bad in her system. There's not much left.
I haven't ran the program you suggested because when it accesses it makes a funny sound like the heads are screwed up. I don't want to smoke the system in addition to the other problem it has. My luck it'll burn out the power supply and add to the parts list. I'm certain the drive is dead. She need's a bigger one anyway. She had to reinstall about a year ago because it was full and she deleted some files the OS needed. She fiqured if she didn't put it there it wasn't needed. BAD IDEA huh.
I'm happy my hard drive is OK. I just need to see if she wants to do a little upgrading or just fix it.
I may put her drive in the old system and see if your program works. I'll pray a little. "Maxblast 3" huh. I'll go 'googleing' for a while. I'll post back with results.

Thanks for your help guys. Any other ideas?????

:D :D :D

[dalek]

I found one small, insignificant and very tiny problem with maxblast. You have to have windoze. I don't have windoze on my rig. I'll look to see if there is something that will run in Linux, that I have.

Sorry, I got tired of windoze crashing and having to reboot when it gets slow and all that crap. I can leave Linux running for weeks, NO PROBLEM.

Back later. . . . . . . .

:D :D :D

[paj12]

I think I may be able to help. I have an old MS-DOS util called Disk Manager 4.3. This was originally intended to low-level Seagate IDE Drives but works on any IDE drive under the sun. You can get it at my GeoCities account here (http://www.geocities.com/paj12/).

You can unzip the file then write it to a floppy with rawwrite. It is a boot disk you boot up on it and run DM. You can scan the drive for errors and low-level it. I've used this with great success.

EDIT: Sorry, bad link first time. Fixed it.

[psi42]

Originally posted by dalek
I found one small, insignificant and very tiny problem with maxblast. You have to have windoze. I don't have windoze on my rig.
:D :D :D


Oh yeah I forgot:). The actual program runs from a bootable floppy and does not require windoze.

But of course the idiots put the floppy image in an exe. Have you tried running the exe in wine? It's just a simple program that extracts the files to the floppy, so wine should be able to run it without a problem.

Sorry I forgot to mention it. I created the floppy a LONG time ago and I forgot I needed windoze to do it. :(


By the way, maxblast actually DESTROYED one of my windoze installations. It would have been pretty funny if it hadn't corrupted the partition table in the process.:D


But if the drive works, you probably don't need maxblast anyway. The only things it is really good for are low level formatting hard drives and corrupting EZ-BIOS. :)

~psi42

[dalek]

I'm talking about two different drives. The original drive in HER system is the Western Digital 40Gb WD400. The drive I put into her system was MY Samsung 2.5GB. It, the Samsung, works fine in mine but not in hers. The WD drive won't work in nothing, my system or hers. Basically her drive won't work period and her system won't work with any drive.
I have never used wine before, never drunk any either. I feel like reinstalling tonight so I'll see how bad I can screw this thing up. Hey, that's how I learn. I try something new, screw it up really bad, come here get help or reinstall and start fresh. Hey, windoze crashes on it's own. If it's going to die, I want to kill it.

:cool: :D :D :D

[psi42]

All I can suggest is to create the maxblast floppy under wine on your working machine, and then see if it can do anything with the 40GB hard drive.

[leonpmu]

1) Processor is?? - If it is an AMD and the proc fan is FUBAR then system is stalling becuase of overheating

2) Did you try changing the IDE cable and also the IDE connector ie put the drive as master on the end of the cable on the secondary connector etc...

The other thing is, what about power supply, how strong is it, and is the fan still working.

Hope this helps a leetle bit :D

[dalek]

I got wine installed. I'm trying to figure out how to get in it and make it work. I'm reading www.winehq.com now. I found out that 'xine' is not 'wine'. They're close in name though.

Thanks for your help. I'm still banging my head on the wall. <<<<<<< ha ha

:D :D :D

[dalek]

I did check both P/S and CPU fans. I also checked the CPU temp after it had been running for a little while. It was about 110F. I even blowed out a little dust just for good measure.
I did also replace the cables with known good ones. No change. The power supply is fine. It is one of the better ones not one of those you save five bucks on just to burn out something else that costs a $100.
Good ideas though leonpmu. Wish it would fix it to.

Thanks. . . .

:D :D :D

[dalek]

OK, I tried wine and it didn't taste good at all. What I got was a gray screen with what looked like hard drives and then a login screen. I tried to restart 'x' but it said nope. I had to restart.
I'll have to do some reading on this before trying again. I need a GUI type wine.
There's that head hitting the wall again.

:D :D :D :D

[psi42]

Originally posted by dalek
OK, I tried wine and it didn't taste good at all. What I got was a gray screen with what looked like hard drives and then a login screen. I tried to restart 'x' but it said nope. I had to restart.
I'll have to do some reading on this before trying again. I need a GUI type wine.
There's that head hitting the wall again.

:D :D :D :D


whoa.... how exactly did you manage to do that????:confused:

Here is how I got wine to run on mandrake 9.1:

install byacc and flex from the mandrake cds

download the newest wine source

./tools/wineinstall (automated compile and install)

now edit ~/.wine/wine_config (not sure if that is the exact name) and put in the correct mount points for your floppy and cdrom

then just run

wine programname

and hope it doesn't crash


:D:)


~psi42


P.S. Don't hit your head against the wall anymore. It's bad for the wall. :D

[dalek]

I installed the ones you mentioned and all that had wine in the name from the Mandrake CD's. I have a very slow dial-up. My rig smokes but the phone line doesn't.
I didn't have the ones you mentioned when I crashed. Am I going to crash again?? Hey it lived, just worried me for a minute. I typed in "wine maxblast3.exe", is that correct? I was reading kind of fast so may be my fault that it crashed.

Thanks.

:D :D :D

[psi42]

Hmm I don't know but I assume the wine on the mandrake cds is very outdated. wine has new releases very often.

I have dialup too :):D

when you type wine maxblast3.exe, do any error messages appear in the terminal?


~psi42

[dalek]

Here's the boo boo message:
[root@localhost Desktop]# wine maxblast3.exe
Warning: could not find wine config [Drive x] entry for current working directory /home/dale/Desktop; starting in windows directory.
/usr/bin/wine.bin: cannot find 'maxblast3.exe'

Hey, I don't now crap about this. See the little guy under my name. That's me!
I was in the directory where maxblast3.exe is when I typed this. I looked in the wine.conf file and it has pointers to floppy and cd and looks OK. What does it mean by "[Drive x]" entry? I'm going to dive in that file again. In the conf files I've seen before "#" means for us to read and the system to ignore. What does ";;" mean? I noticed a lot of those in the wine.conf file.

I found something else to try. If I don't post for a while, I'll be installing. HA HA

:D :D :D

[psi42]

okay the reason it is doing that is because maxblast3.exe is not located in wine's fake "C:" drive. Look in the wine config file and it should tell you where the fake c drive is. Put the maxblast exe in that folder and give it another try.


:)

Also try running it as normal user. Root uses a different wine config file than other users. :)


~psi42

[dalek]

I found "My Documents" here: file:/var/lib/wine/My Documents. I put the maxblast file there and it still says it can't find it. Here's the boo boo I got:
[dale@localhost dale]$ wine maxblast3.exe
/usr/bin/wine.bin: cannot find 'maxblast3.exe'
[dale@localhost dale]$
Yep, my name is dale.
I put a copy on the data drive "/mnt/windows" to. I use it to store downloaded files so that if I crash I don't lose them. I figured what the heck.
I can't change to the "My Documents" folder because it has a space in it.
I also found out that I was looking at the wrong conf file. I'm trying to figure it out. It's in perl. Me not programmer.

Thanks . . . . . . . . . .

:D :D :D

[dalek]

I put the file in another folder: /var/lib/wine/windows/Desktop. I tried it again and got this:
[dale@localhost Desktop]$ wine maxblast3.exe
XIO: fatal IO error 0 (Success) on X server ":0.0"
after 235 requests (235 known processed) with 0 events remaining.
[dale@localhost Desktop]$

I also got blinded by a white flash on the screen. I don't think it likes me. Hey, it found it this time!!!

:confused: :confused: :confused: :confused:

[leonpmu]

I recommend downloading the version from www.codeweavers.com, it ia downloadable in RPM, so is bliss to install, with a GUI config, really simple, I never did figure out the config for wine in consoile :confused:

[dalek]

I never could get it to work either. At any rate I got a response from AOPEN and had to clarify a few things. They missed that I tried to reformat and install on her system. They thought that I just took it out of my system and plugged it in and expected it to work. NOT. Maybe they will have a clue about the original mobo problem. They were pretty quick on the response though. It seems they have good support.
I'll play with wine some more and check out the one suggested. I wish they had one that was GUI all the way.

THANKS GUYS

So thats how the color thing works?? Now I'll have to figure out the quote thingy.

:D :D :D :D

Does this thing have a spellschecker? I can't spell/type worth a darn? :rolleyes: :rolleyes:

[psi42]

Seems like you are having a bit of trouble with wine:).

I recommend you just compile the source, it is command line but the install/config process is automated and it will actually tell you where your fake c drive is.


Good luck,

~psi42

[dalek]

I've been on the roof today. I'm getting ready to retar. I got it clean today and hope to tar tomorrow AM early. I haven't had time to mess with it today. I'll work on it in a day or two if I can. I'm disabled so it may me few days before I get over the taring.

"I'll be Back" he he he he he

:D :D :D :D