What's dying??????????

gandhi · 19 Dec 2007 at 18:14

In my slightly antique system?

MSI-KM400
AMD athlon 2500
1Gb Ram
FX5700
1xDVD R/W drive
3X HD's all IDE, 1xmaxtor 120gb, 1 x samsung 120gb, 1x samsung 300gb

At post the bloomin heap often hangs when it gets to 'detecting IDE drives'

Sometimes it doesn't even get as far as the memory test, just showing 'memory testi' on the post screen.

Thing is, if I leave the thing on the hung POST screen for 10 minutes and then re-boot it quite often starts up.

I've run the SMART hd check in speedfan and they all come back as 95%+ healthy (not bad for a 6 year old PC eh?)

Ideas?

I suspect it's a mobo component thats on its way out.

semi-pro waster · 19 Dec 2007 at 19:54

At the moment it could is rather difficult to tell but motherboard, leads, DVDRW or PSU could all be potential culprits if the hard drives themselves are fine. Have you tried booting with one of the hard drives disconnected yet? Do this in order working your way around them if you can and also remove the optical drive to see if any one of them is causing the issue. The other parts are more difficult to test so that is where I'd start.

gandhi · 19 Dec 2007 at 21:10

yeah,

been through all that jazz of swapping HD's, leads, IDE channels, power leads etc.

Just thought somebody might have some clarity I could steal!

melbourne720 · 19 Dec 2007 at 21:20

If it won't complete a POST, I'd say it was something fundamental. Motherboard probably.

Now might be a good time to buy yourself a new rig (as this is such a cheap time of year [ :rolleyes:

at myself])

Amonlym · 19 Dec 2007 at 22:10

are any of the caps on the mobo showing obvious signs of bulging or leaking?