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#1
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BAFFLING! - False connection on HDs
I have a 2 year old Athlon with 2 HDs. Occasionally one of the HDs will get
'disconnected'. The first time it happened it scared the sh*t outta me, I had gone out & returned to find a black screen with a message saying 'press any key to reboot'. Having done so the BIOS failed to recognize the Master with the OS. Just in case, I dug up a screwdriver, removed the side of the case & pushed both connections into the main drive, rebooted & this time the HD was back in action. Afterwards it would be the second drive (the slave or D:/ drive) that would, occasionally, lose connection, with Windows saying "you have unplugged or ejected the following device...", sometimes crashing afterwards. Lately it has been the C: drive again playing up: Windows will usually freeze, sometimes the PC will reboot itself (no blue screens) & then the BIOS will fail to recognize the drive. After touching the cables the connection will be restored & Windows will start as normal. I don't think it's the HD itself that's at fault as it can happen to either drive. Otherwise the drives are OK, all the data intact & all apps running (except once when Windows got corrupted after this happened in the middle of downloading stuff & it wouldn't start). Physically the connections go as far as they can go, I wonder whether this could be a fault of the onboard controller on the MB or something wrong with the cables. A few times the PC has not started normally, instead the BIOS setup screen has come up by itself with a message that there was an 'improper external CPU setting' & it had 'restored the default settings', which I must change: the multiplier resets itself to 10x but the PC doesn't work well with this setting, it tends to go into 'suspended animation' if I leave it like that. If I reset it to 13x the PC works like a charm. This doesn't happen every time the false connection occurs, only sometimes. Any ideas? Is this a MB, CPU, HD or cable problem? Many thanks |
#2
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You've checked the connections, but what about the connectors as you briefly
mention? Try different ones in different drives. Or better still, a totally different PSU. "Scully" wrote in message ... I have a 2 year old Athlon with 2 HDs. Occasionally one of the HDs will get 'disconnected'. The first time it happened it scared the sh*t outta me, I had gone out & returned to find a black screen with a message saying 'press any key to reboot'. Having done so the BIOS failed to recognize the Master with the OS. Just in case, I dug up a screwdriver, removed the side of the case & pushed both connections into the main drive, rebooted & this time the HD was back in action. Afterwards it would be the second drive (the slave or D:/ drive) that would, occasionally, lose connection, with Windows saying "you have unplugged or ejected the following device...", sometimes crashing afterwards. Lately it has been the C: drive again playing up: Windows will usually freeze, sometimes the PC will reboot itself (no blue screens) & then the BIOS will fail to recognize the drive. After touching the cables the connection will be restored & Windows will start as normal. I don't think it's the HD itself that's at fault as it can happen to either drive. Otherwise the drives are OK, all the data intact & all apps running (except once when Windows got corrupted after this happened in the middle of downloading stuff & it wouldn't start). Physically the connections go as far as they can go, I wonder whether this could be a fault of the onboard controller on the MB or something wrong with the cables. A few times the PC has not started normally, instead the BIOS setup screen has come up by itself with a message that there was an 'improper external CPU setting' & it had 'restored the default settings', which I must change: the multiplier resets itself to 10x but the PC doesn't work well with this setting, it tends to go into 'suspended animation' if I leave it like that. If I reset it to 13x the PC works like a charm. This doesn't happen every time the false connection occurs, only sometimes. Any ideas? Is this a MB, CPU, HD or cable problem? Many thanks |
#3
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My bet is your ribbon cable is bad. It's cheap to buy a new cable if you
don't already have a spare laying around. You get a new one every time you buy a drive, CD or DVD. Tom J "Scully" wrote in message ... I have a 2 year old Athlon with 2 HDs. Occasionally one of the HDs will get 'disconnected'. The first time it happened it scared the sh*t outta me, I had gone out & returned to find a black screen with a message saying 'press any key to reboot'. Having done so the BIOS failed to recognize the Master with the OS. Just in case, I dug up a screwdriver, removed the side of the case & pushed both connections into the main drive, rebooted & this time the HD was back in action. Afterwards it would be the second drive (the slave or D:/ drive) that would, occasionally, lose connection, with Windows saying "you have unplugged or ejected the following device...", sometimes crashing afterwards. Lately it has been the C: drive again playing up: Windows will usually freeze, sometimes the PC will reboot itself (no blue screens) & then the BIOS will fail to recognize the drive. After touching the cables the connection will be restored & Windows will start as normal. I don't think it's the HD itself that's at fault as it can happen to either drive. Otherwise the drives are OK, all the data intact & all apps running (except once when Windows got corrupted after this happened in the middle of downloading stuff & it wouldn't start). Physically the connections go as far as they can go, I wonder whether this could be a fault of the onboard controller on the MB or something wrong with the cables. A few times the PC has not started normally, instead the BIOS setup screen has come up by itself with a message that there was an 'improper external CPU setting' & it had 'restored the default settings', which I must change: the multiplier resets itself to 10x but the PC doesn't work well with this setting, it tends to go into 'suspended animation' if I leave it like that. If I reset it to 13x the PC works like a charm. This doesn't happen every time the false connection occurs, only sometimes. Any ideas? Is this a MB, CPU, HD or cable problem? Many thanks |
#4
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Scully wrote:
I have a 2 year old Athlon with 2 HDs. Occasionally one of the HDs will get 'disconnected'. The first time it happened it scared the sh*t outta me, I had gone out & returned to find a black screen with a message saying 'press any key to reboot'. Having done so the BIOS failed to recognize the Master with the OS. Just in case, I dug up a screwdriver, removed the side of the case & pushed both connections into the main drive, rebooted & this time the HD was back in action. snip for brevity Had a similar problem when I added a "Y" power cable. Seems that, although the white modular portion of the cable was firmly seated into the drive, the actual pins inside the modular had been pushed throught (though not visibly) and were barely making contact with the drive's pins, causing all kinds of "weird" drive problems... sometimes it'll work... sometimes not! Also, if you have "old-ish" ribbon cables, you might want to change them too, as the heat build-up inside the case can make them brittle. HTH, Charlie Legman |
#5
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"Scully" wrote:
I have a 2 year old Athlon with 2 HDs. Occasionally one of the HDs will get 'disconnected'. The first time it happened it scared the sh*t outta me, I had gone out & returned to find a black screen with a message saying 'press any key to reboot'. Having done so the BIOS failed to recognize the Master with the OS. Just in case, I dug up a screwdriver, removed the side of the case & pushed both connections into the main drive, rebooted & this time the HD was back in action. Afterwards it would be the second drive (the slave or D:/ drive) that would, occasionally, lose connection, with Windows saying "you have unplugged or ejected the following device...", sometimes crashing afterwards. Lately it has been the C: drive again playing up: Windows will usually freeze, sometimes the PC will reboot itself (no blue screens) & then the BIOS will fail to recognize the drive. After touching the cables the connection will be restored & Windows will start as normal. I don't think it's the HD itself that's at fault as it can happen to either drive. Otherwise the drives are OK, all the data intact & all apps running (except once when Windows got corrupted after this happened in the middle of downloading stuff & it wouldn't start). Physically the connections go as far as they can go, I wonder whether this could be a fault of the onboard controller on the MB or something wrong with the cables. A few times the PC has not started normally, instead the BIOS setup screen has come up by itself with a message that there was an 'improper external CPU setting' & it had 'restored the default settings', which I must change: the multiplier resets itself to 10x but the PC doesn't work well with this setting, it tends to go into 'suspended animation' if I leave it like that. If I reset it to 13x the PC works like a charm. This doesn't happen every time the false connection occurs, only sometimes. Any ideas? Is this a MB, CPU, HD or cable problem? It certainly is one of the above, but the fact that it happened on either drives excludes the drives themselves and limits the suspects to the cable and connector at the board side, if the two drives share the same data flat cable. If the two drives are on separate IDE channels then that could make the onboard IDE chip a suspect too. There isn't much you can do, except checking and fixing bent pins and replacing the data flat cable with a new one, until the problem becomes definitive, or disappears after having fixed the above. Regards, Zvi -- NetZ Computing Ltd. ISRAEL http://invircible.com InVircible Virus Defense Solutions, ResQ and Data Recovery Utilities E-mail sent in reply to this post will not be considered private and will be answered in the newsgroup. Top posting is not appreciated! |
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