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New tower issue

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Speeddemon3

New Member
Joined
Nov 21, 2012
Hello everybody, It's been awhile since I've logged in, I followed everybody's advice and just bought a new system last year so I've been problem free and perusing the forums I haven't' seen anything I could assist with so I never signed in but I've always been here!

Now I have a weird frustrating issue that defies logic with my son's system. He scooped a tower that was a great deal for goofing around and worked great gaming but I noticed it got hot and suggested we transplant everything into a Thermaltake tower I had dormant in the basement so it wouldn't bake itself. It is equipped with:

Asus P5WD2 Motherboard
Intel Duo-Core 3.2 CPU
2 x 160 Gb WD hdd's
Nvidia/MSI GPU
WD Burner
450W PSU
4 Gb installed
Win 7 Premium

Machine ran great but with it becoming so hot it was just smart to move it to a tower that could contain extra fans so we swapped and remounted everything and plugged it in and everything ran fine, booted, went online so we shut it down, disconnected the tower and took it back out to connect a case fan and took it back into the computer room and wouldn't boot.

We tried to restart and went to the Asus screen, into post and then black with a blinking cursor then the message reboot or restart with drive configured correctly or install boot disc or something to that effect. We once got an "overvoltage / overclocking failure" please reboot. It isn't OC'd and I have no idea what the hell that is suppose to mean.

We went into Bios and set everything back to default with no change. I didn't do the install of the components so I took pics before I even started and reinstalled everything back the way it was.

The bios list is all IDE's with the first 3 empty because it is Sata, and the bios recognizes the 2 hdds but refuses to boot from them. I did change the boot order from the floppy to the hd but it only gives me the one hd to boot from. One thing I found interesting is the board is equipped with 4 sata plugs and #1 is empty, 2 & 3 are to the hd's and the 4th is to the burner.

Would re arranging these make a difference? Just wondering.

I have no idea why it would go from a working system to flatlining especially after transferring all the hardware and booting it and then 30 mins later won't boot after a fan install..and now won't recover. Would something have grounded?

If anyone has an idea please hit me back, this is oddly frustrating.

Jason
 
If you chose to use a SATA controller that requires drivers to be installed that could be one problem. But it sounds like there is something up with the BIOS/CMOS so you should disconnect the power cord, press the power on button to discharge the PSU then pop out the cmos battery for about 30 seconds. Put it back in, reconnect the power cord and then turn it back on and hit delete to go back into your bios config. Check your mainboard manual to see which sata ports are controlled by the intel controller and try to use those for your boot drive.

If you had a grounding issue the first thing to do is pull ALL of the hardware out of the case and rebuild it on a cardboard box to check if anything was shorted.
 
If you used all the same hardware and just switched cases and added a fan or 3 that wouldn't cause any problems. I doubt you're pushing your PSU so hard that a few added fans would over tax it. As far as the sata drives it doesn't matter which sata number you plug them into. The bios will recognize the drive and act accordingly.

I'm curious why it would work and then just relocating the tower cause the problem. Are you sure there wasn't something else changed in the move, maybe a flash drive plugged in or something?
 
Other than selecting the HDD in the boot order, you need to select which of your two hard drives that is. That option is in different area, so make sure the HDD with your OS is at the top of that list.
 
Check the hard drive SATA cables and make sure you didn't accidentally dislodge one from either the drive or the motherboard in the process of installing the fan.
 
I thihk a cable got disloged, reconnect all cables, even if they look correct.
try to boot with only the boot drive connected.
 
Thank you everybody!!

I continued to diagnose the system last night and I checked everything from Bios boot order to loose cables to removing everything out of the tower and starting again. The second try was just as successful as the first and when I logged back on I misread my sign-in and it looked like nobody had answered so I thought sh*t, I continued searching for a cause. I knew both HD's were in the same boot order on the same sata ports ( I marked the top HD with a "T" so I knew which drive was plugged where) so I was scratching my head.

I ran a search on the motherboard and found out these boards do have driver issues with the Sata 2 or whichever the "red" sata ports are. Others owners stated the Inter chipset drivers are "buggy" and needed to be reinstalled to work or they found they weren't installed at all which brought me to thinking if the drivers failed to load why did that one HD get listed with the burner..Eureka!!

I pulled the bottom HD cable out of the red sata 2 port leaving the top HD and the burner plugged into the sata 1 ports and bingo.. she booted up. I did get a "no HD detected, press F1 to proceed message" but it loaded after it was pressed! I am assuming that the HD I disconnected was listed to boot first in the order so it doesn't know what to make of the 2nd HD or maybe it had the Win 7 original OS..I don't know.

I did see the builder today and he was a little confused because he said the chipset is Intel and he had no problems with the ports or he said he just got lucky. He did ask if any issues in hardware manager indicated a bad driver or questionable port which it doesn't show anything but I still don't understand why after the build did it boot normally and then mess up a half hour later?

One thing drives me up the wall is the drivers are not listed to download at Asus's site and I don't have any system discs for any hardware so this might be a problem. I only saw downloads for P5WD2 premium boards not my P5WD2. Either way it's working, it boots slightly slower but it's working.

King107s you were almost bang on, and the other replies were first rate!

Thanks everyone for your help!!!

Cheers
Jason
 
Here are your drivers.
http://www.asus.com/Motherboards/P5WD2/HelpDesk_Download/
You should be able to use the Vista drivers for your Win7 install. Then run Windows update and see if a newer version is available.

The reason the system booted after disconnecting the other hard drive is because that other hard drive had priority. If you hook up the other hard drive again, all you need to do is make sure the hard drive with the OS on it gets priority, which can be done by following the instructions in the picture below.
 

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Yeah, you apparently did not connect the SATA cables in the same SATA ports as they were originally. Many motherboards have two SATA controllers. One controls some of the SATA ports and the other the rest. This is so you can have some of the SATA ports configured to IDE emulation mode if necessary to be able to use legacy stuff while using the others as native SATA.
 
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