In article ,
lid (lupomike) wrote:

I have now the pc of my friends, with a asus p4v8x-x motherboard... It
work fine if ther'is the hard disk master in first ide channel as
master, but if i connect one or two cdrom device in the second ide
channel, or one in first channel as slave, the pc is very very slow
at the boot or fail the boot or is freeze in winxp, or/and dont
appear the cdrom units in win xp....
I have tried all, to change cdrom units, power switch, hard disk,
cable, restore default values in the bios... nothing. This problem is
borned two weeks ago, because in the past all the system worked
fine.... is possible that ther'is a hardware fall in the
notherboard??!!

Maybe the ATX power supply doesn't have enough current to run
all the drive devices ? Can you connect only a single CDROM and
no hard drive, then boot a Windows install CD ?

If you have a spare ATX power supply, give it a try.

Also check that nothing is shorting to the motherboard.
Removing the motherboard from the computer, and assembling
the system components on a piece of cardboard (an insulator),
can allow you to test the hardware, without fear of any
short circuits from the metal on the computer case. Since
any plug-in AGP or PCI cards are poorly supported mechanically
when doing this test, be careful not to tug on any cables while
testing the system. Also, each time before turning on the
power, make sure the AGP and PCI cards are fully seated in
their sockets.

As you suggest, it could be a failing IDE interface on the
motherboard. That does happen. But, I would at least try
another power supply first, before RMAing the motherboard.

HTH,
Paul