Bad Power Supply or Something Else?

I was wondering if someone could shed some light on my situation.

Originally, I had a cusl2 (1006.a bios) MB with one stick of 256mb cas2 micron memory, a celeron 633 processor and a Diamond s540 video card. It was very stable running at 950mhz under win2K. In addition, I had a 20GB Maxtor DiamondMax Plus 60 and a 3com network card. A turbo-cool 350 in a PCPower&Cooling case rounds out my system from the land of misfit toys.

I added another stick of micron cas2 256MB ram and a Creative Labs PCI128 sound card and began loading the appropriate win2K drivers when the fun began. The first sign of trouble was a series of error messages within win2K indicating a corrupted system directory. Next, the OS recommended running chkdsk, which I did several times. Now, chkdsk runs everytime I boot the computer.

I removed the parts one by one to see what caused the problem. The system in its premod state now exhibits the same symptoms. I backed the clock down to 633 and still get the errors and the chkdsk routine still runs at startup. I swapped in an older Maxtor 10GB DiamondMax Plus 40 drive and the bios would not recognize it. I swapped another drive, a Seagate Medalist Pro 6530, and tried to install win2K. On three installation attempts, I got a BSOD, a locked machine where the power switch became unresponsive (i.e., had to unplug the stupid thing to turn it off), and noticed the cd drive was having trouble reading or finding all of the files on the installation cd (cd ok). Win2K would not install on the original drive without locking, BSOD or skipping installation files.

Here is some more information on the system. The original mb was a p5-99vm, which died with similar issues. I figured the integrated IDE controller was shot and decided not to pursue any additional troubleshooting. Now with the cusl2 having what seems to be the same problem, I am beginning to think the power supply or the cd drive could be the culprits since they are the only common parts between the two systems. I even tried new IDE cables (80 pin for the primary master HD)

I rechecked all connections, ran virus check and changed one variable at a time during my testing.

Any ideas?

Thanks,

SportQ

Don't know if you have a multiple HD system. I have a dying WD drive that screws everything up like that when it's in. Even after taking it out, it somehow leaves some of its "screw-up mojo" so that the BIOS won't recognize the new HD until after a few reboots. Don't know why it happened, but maybe something similar is going on with yours: dying HD fragging the rest of the system.

If you have another psu handy, I would try swapping it out. It also could be that the psu spiked your board and weakened some components but I would check the psu first.

Thanks for your suggestions.

Just grasping at straws here.

-If the psu spiked the board, is the mb essentially shot or would a different psu help out? In other words, should I go ahead and order a new mb?

-Why would a flaky psu target the IDE controller (both cases the mb's ide failed)?

-Any other condition besides a spike that the psu could produce (or allow) that would cause this to occur? I do have a 350ups, but even that has been replaced in the past. Perhaps I am drawing too much current from the outlet.

Again, thanks for your suggestions and ideas.

sportQ

I couldn’t find a viable psu to swap.

However, the one thing that I did find is the MB hardware monitor is reporting 3.45 volts at the 3.3v connector. Is this number significantly out of specification or within normal operating ranges? If it is out of specification and the MB has been operating at this level for some time, could it have damaged my MB?

I don’t have any numbers to compare this to so any help would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks,

SportQ

Bad Celeron processor.