help, booting reeeeally slow

so i did a bit of case modding today, completely disassembled my case, then took the empty steel chassis downstairs and dremelled the front and rear grills out and replaced them with pretty laser cut ones.

when i got back, i reassembled, throwing in my new 300 gig sata drive while i was at it, doing the wiring really neat from the ground up.

however, when im finally done, i hit the switch and the computer just makes a little bleep then shuts off.

confuzed, i reopen the case and check the main mobo connection. it was only half in, so i pushed it in.

then itd power up, but wouldnt post, i just kept getting a black screen. i pulled everything off the two rails connected to my 6800U, and FINALLY i got picture.


however, now my computer goes so friggin slow. Like it takes 30 seconds to decide i have hard drives, and goes from there. then it does some kind of nvidia/intel diagnostic test then just hangs on an error message. everythings 30x slower. ive unplugged my dvd drive, all but the main hd, my sound card, and soon to be all the fans but the cpu fan/3rd party g-card heatsink.

this has never happened before, and i have no clue whats going on.

heres my specs

enermax 460watt psu.

athlon 64 3000+ 754 pin

soltek 250gb mobo

eVGA geforce 6800 ultra

120 gig seagate ata, 250 gig WD ata (main drive)

300 gig WD sata

2x 512 mb OCZ cas2 3 3 6

pioneer dvd rw

3x 120mm fan
1x 80mm fan
zalman gpu cooler

have you tried a virus scan?

cant get that far, this is definately a hardware problem. like it doesnt get anywhere near booting windows.

right now its either hanging on the start screen (tells you the proc and how much ram you have, and that its searching for ide drives), or it will go a little farther at about a tenth the pace then hang somewhere else.

im thinking maybe i screwed up my mobo? or put a bit too much pressure on my cpu, i dont know. everything was working earlier, none of the hardware has really been changed since then. i basicly just took it out, rested it for a few hours, then put it all back together.

Have you tried resetting the bios?

I've had this happen before a few times after taking apart or building a system.

The problems you've described kind of sound like you could have a grounding problem. Check to make sure the motherboard is securely mounted w/ stand-offs and that the I/O back-plate doesn't have anything poking into the motherboard I/O ports. Disconnect everything from inside the case besides power, mobo, cpu, one hard drive, one stick of RAM in the 1st slot, and your GPU if you don't have on-board video. If you DO have on-board video, use that instead and unplug your AGP/PCI-E GPU.

Good luck.


EDIT: BTW, the "mobo power connector only half in" thing might've shorted your motherboard.

It is possible that making the cables all nice 'n neat may have had a negative effect. Make sure that you did not break the insulation on any wire. It may not be a good idea to have data cables running tight with power cables. etc.

I think that it is more likely that you have two masters and/or two slaves on the same cahnnel. It is also possible that you used to have cable select and now you have master/slave. Our Gateways at work are like the later.

I hope that you find that you have no long lasting damage.

MonroeM said:

...The problems you've described kind of sound like you could have a grounding problem...

Click to expand...

Come to think of it, I've seen that too. It's been a while and it didn't immediately come to mind, but I've seen this once with a motherboard which was shorting with the case. I resolved it by using non-conducting washers on the mounting screws, on both sides of the motherboard, both on top the motherboard, and also between the motherboard and the mounting posts. Small plastic or paper washers will work (I believe I used those little brown paper ones.)

Did you try without that new 300Gb HDD?

wdeep4 you're my hero.

i finally narrowed it down to maybe damaging my proc, or a short on the board.

so i pull everything out, reseat the HSF (ironically, the proc wasnt damaged until AFTER i did this, i managed to drop the proc when i was putting it back in and bent 5 pins, but i think i straightened them out all right).

so as im putting the board back on, what do i find.

a screw sitting under the spacers, just wide enough to be hitting the back of my board.

now im up and running, and everythings fine and dandy.

thanks for your help everybody!


another funny thing is that this whole thing started because i was cutting out the fan grills to try and quiet my case down, but i plugged my fans straight into the rails rather than through the fan controller so now theyre all running full speed and loud as hell. my god im an idiot . at least the temps are good

Very good.

It definitely sounded like a grounding issue.

Glad to see you're up and running.

thanks. you scared the ****nit out of me when you said i might have killed my mobo :|. haha, no damage done though so its all good .

This post helped me troubleshoot my booting problem as well. NONE of my mobos that I had lying on the floor would power up with the power connector connected to the graphics card for the last couple days. I tried 2 different graphics cards, 3 different mobos and 2 power supplies and the same thing would happen to ALL of them! If I had the power connector for the graphics card unplugged, the system could power up (altough not always) but I would get the message that I have not connected the cable to the graphics card. When I plugged in the power connector, I would get absolutely nothing! No attempt to boot at all. No fans spinning, no sounds. This drove me bonkers for the last couple days and I was so sad and thought that I somehow killed everything I had (most of it brand new too!).

Finally today, after reading this post I thought about possible grounding problems and common things that I had with all the mobos and realized that I always had the static free bag sitting right under the mobo at all times. I had thought that this would be a good thing and actually protect the mobo from static but it turns out it is actually evil and was my problem! When I moved the static bag from underneath the mobo, system booted up right away with the power connector connected and so I tried all the other components and they are all working fine now too! You CAN'T imagine how happy I am now right now!

LOL, good to hear you're up and running Paladin. I normally use rubber mats and copper standoffs when I'm working on an isolated mobo.