bad PC upgrade.

jezscott

jezscott

jezscott

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Joined
18 Oct 2002
Posts
322
Location
North London, UK
I had a perfectly working PC. So one day I decided to upgrade it.
  • swapped the CPU from an Athlon64 3700+ to a 4400+X2
  • bought larger faster memory
  • new AGP card for HD video & games
  • swapped PATA DVD drive for SATA blu-ray drive
  • My TV tuner stopped working, so I bought a new one.

Just discovered that my original TV card was actually ok, it was my aerial splitter that was broken.

I can't boot from my new blu-ray SATA drive So I have to use the old DVD drive for OS install. Then swap the drives back once Vista is installed.

the CPU upgrade caused my new AGP card to be VGA only. (Same happens with old AGP card) after a bit of research I discovered my mobo doesn't like Vista+Dualcore+AGP. I spent 2 days trying to get it working as some people out there have managed to.

I got the AGP card working, but I have no idea how. I created a system restore point and the PC was working for a good 10mins! but then I accidentally uninstalled a miscellaneous IDE driver with the add remove programs list.

I restarted the PC and now Vista doesn't load. I tried safe mode and played with a couple of BIOS settings, but when it gets a few seconds into the vista loading progress bar the machine resets.

The POST screen can see my Hard drive, I inserted the OS disk (...into old dvd drive) and the OS recovery/reinstall etc loads fine, but it can't restore the hard drive and when I try to reinstall there is no Hard drive to select and install onto. Now I figure the HD is broken, so I swap power & sata cables to no avail.

I put the HD into another PC and it seems to be fine (I took the opportunity to transfer my 300Gb of not-yet-backedup files from my media storage partition)


What should I try next?


PC Details: underlined new parts
OS: Microsoft Windows Vista Home Premium 32bit OEM
MOBO: ASRock 939A8X-M, mATX Socket-939, 1000MHz FSB, Athlon64FX/64X2/64, AGP8x, 7.1 Audio, 10/100LAN (LINK)
CPU: AMD Athlon64 X2 4400+ sk939
MEM: 2x1Gb DDR400 OCZ Platinum XTC Ed. CL2 Memory
HD: Western Digital CAVIAR GP 750GB WD7500AACS 16MB SATA/300
GFX: Radeon HD 3850 SILENT 512MB AGP8x
DVD: LG GGC-H20L Blu-ray drive
CASE: Antec NSK1300 mATX Cube Case - 300W PSU
MISC: Compro VideoMate Vista T750F Dual DVB-T Hybrid
​
 
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Not sure what Blue ray drives are like...But theres no problems here at work with booting off of SATA dvd/cd drives etc...So it could be the blue ray functionality or something.

What motherboard do you have? If it's such a widely known issue, there may be a firmware upgrade for the bios?

Did you do the usual, such as processor drivers etc?
 
Delvis said:
Not sure what Blue ray drives are like...But theres no problems here at work with booting off of SATA dvd/cd drives etc...So it could be the blue ray functionality or something.
Click to expand...
I'm ok with the blu-ray drive not booting, I'll temporarily use my old DVD to install the OS then swap once the machine is working.

Delvis said:
What motherboard do you have? If it's such a widely known issue, there may be a firmware upgrade for the bios?
Click to expand...
motherboard at end of post (with link)
Asrock stopped releasing drivers for it in 2006, and the ones it does have are XP only. the work around is to install them in compatability mode.
The mobo chipset is an Uli 1689, Uli was bought by nvidia and no longer supported.
have tried the latest bios and the previous bios release and both are about the same.
But it all worked (for 10mins) so I assumed the OS not loading was something new?

Delvis said:
Did you do the usual, such as processor drivers etc?
Click to expand...
only through win update - AMD's drivers seem to be for XP only
 
Update:

I put the HD back in the PC & it still resets.

I Booted Vista from the DVD drive & now it recognises the HD and attempted to fix it ...but failed

However, it now allows me to re-install Vista, which is what its doing now.

we'll see.
 
Maybe you need drivers for the instalation on the disc...I know it's not THAT likely in vista, as it tends to load its own drivers. But might be worth a shot I guess.

Have you tried a different port on the motherboard out of interest? Concerning the Hard drive I mean.
 
Update:

not sure how, but its up and running again
...previously I tried both SATA ports and nothing happened. It could be a dodgy port, I better not touch it now.

Vista has reinstalled
I restarted the PC and Vista loads ok

checked the Device Manager and the graphics card is VGA only again, so I'm back to where I was at 1am last night.

I now have to try and recreate what I did between 1-3am to get it working in AGP again.
 
Delvis said:
What you mean by the graphics card? It's installing a default driver for it or something?
Click to expand...

yes a default VGA driver only and ATI drivers won't recognise it as an HD 3850 AGP

I fixed this yesterday using XP drivers installed in XP compatability mode, just can't remember, which ones.
 
I think I just figured out what the problem with the HD was.

In the BIOS settings is Raid / Non-Raid
Non-Raid works
Raid doesn't (resets during boot)

it looks the Raid setting actually swaps the only 2 SATA ports to a different SATA controller or something which vista doesn't recognise

Looks like I didn't need to reinstall Vista after all

the IDE driver I accidental uninstalled must have been for the SATA raid controller

I could have just reinstalled the driver...
although I'm sure I tried playing with these BIOS raid settings when trying to start it...
 
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Well...You only need it set to RAID if your raid your drives surely...Tad pointless otherwise.

we have to do this at work with one of our workstation boards for some unknown reason...tis silly.
 
Delvis said:
Well...You only need it set to RAID if your raid your drives surely...Tad pointless otherwise.

we have to do this at work with one of our workstation boards for some unknown reason...tis silly.
Click to expand...

found raid driver and successfully installed
PC only works when raid is enabled, even though I only have 1 sataHD & 1 sataBR :confused:
 
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