Boot Disk Error

davidansell

davidansell

davidansell

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Joined
11 Aug 2010
Posts
660
Location
Cambridge
Ok so I am repairing a friends pc for him.

it fully works at my house, prime 95 stable for 24 hours, gpu has been tested fine, mem tested fine, fresh install of windows 7 64bit.

His pc is the following spec:
Q9650 @ 3.0ghz
4gb Kingston Hyper-X 1066mhz
Bioster Tpower I45
ATI HD 4870X2 2gb
750gb SATA HDD
Bequiet 650W PSU

After pretty much testing everything, when he arrives home from me saying its ok, he seems to get 'Boot disk Error a lot' it literally takes him 20 mins to get into windows, yet when he comes over it loads first time without a problem?

I initally fixed the problem as his board did not seem to like the memory running @ 1066mhz, downclocked to 800mhz, was fine for a day, then the problem came back?

Is this the hard drive or the motherboard?
 
The fact that when it is moved it seems to play up/stop playing up suggests there may be a problem with the connection between the hdd and the mobo, maybe try another sata cable or sata port on the mobo and maybe use another power cable for the hdd to rule that out too.
 
Are you using the same kettle lead at both your and his house? Has he tried different sockets in his house. Might be worth him trying loading without any USB stuff connected too just to rule out things that might be different between his and your house.
 
Yeah his psu requires a different kettle lead to anything I have, so its the same one, in terms of sockets I am not quite sure on that one, another thing which lead me towards the motherboard if I tell him to take 1 stick of memory out when the error occurs, it boots fine (and then he puts it back in and its fine)
 
davidansell said:
another thing which lead me towards the motherboard if I tell him to take 1 stick of memory out when the error occurs, it boots fine (and then he puts it back in and its fine)
Click to expand...

that's very odd, I don't think a memory problem would cause the system to not find the boot disk, either the computer would not POST or problems would be encountered once the boot disk was found (loading windows or once windows was loaded). I wonder about that PSU given it seems to be a crossfired system, I'm not up on the latest hardware - is it a reputable branded PSU?
 
BeQuiet, infact I cannot quote on the wattage of the psu (Initally I thought it maybe the psu) but unfortunately the psu in my personal machine doesnt even have a PCI-E adapter so I am unable to test.
 
it's a strange problem, personally I would take out one of the gfx cards for now and see if the problem persists. Regarding the memory situation, I see it's memtest stable, so doubt one of the modules are faulty. But then you say you had it stable and tested after a reinstall so it still doesn't add up lol Maybe you encountered no problems because you didn't cold boot it after reinstalling (as the machine would have been running for a bit whilst you did the reinstall :) ), this may explain why your friend has problems where you didn't. Still, it's a head scratcher!
 
the graphics card is an X2 model therefore its 2 cards on one board, well his pc hasnt been on today and when he brought it over at 8pm it worked first time.

I have replaced the SATA Cable and used a molex to sata power thingy, but I still have not seen the error appear.. :X
 
very frustrating, I suppose the only thing you can do is let him take it home and see if the problem is gone. If he says it is playing up again then I would go round and see it in action and troubleshoot it there if possible. Hopefuly others can comment too, the answer may be staring at us!
 
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