Another "Help! I screwed up my computer!!" Thread

/smile

Yesterday, I desembled my computer for its post summer cleaning. I carefully took the drive cages out, sitting them on my desk. I unplugged everything, and took out the PSU, PCI-cards, Radeon 9800pro...well, everything except the motherboard.

I can-dusted the inside of the case, blowing out the various dust-rodents. I continued my cleaning by dusting the fans and cards.

I put the PSU in next, followed by the fans. I ran the wires around the case trying to hide them as best I could. I next put the drive-cages back in (drives never left the cages). Installed my AGP/PCI cards, worked the cabling, and tied everything off. I tucked my corners and hid the wires as best as I could...

I powered up my computer, went through the initial BIOS screen, everything was OK...lead to a black screen that never changed...

I hard-restarted, and got the WinXP "Bad shutdown" screen, asking for safe mode, or normal, I tried both, neither helped.

I decided to reinstall windows, I popped in my XP disc, and literally had to leave the computer run for over 3 hours (I was out,not sure when it actually started) before it would leave the "Starting Windows" Screen on the Blue-install screen. I proceeded to install windows, setting up my partitions and everything. It moved onto the Visual part of the installation (setting the time and network settings). As soon as it started to "install" I got a blue-screen of death about being unable to write to the disc, and try again.

That's the last actual thing I've gotten my PC to do. I can get the XP CD to get to the "Starting up Windows" comment at the bottom, but I've never made it to the liscencing agreement...

What have I done? What can I do? I've tried different Hard Drives. I've tried connecting my HD's through a ATA PCI card...nothing has worked.

I either let it run, looking at a black screen, or i try to install windows, and look at a blue screen with "starting up windows" at the bottom...

PLEASE...please help me out?

Exact wording on the Blue-set up screen is "Set up is starting Windows". It's been sitting there for almost an hour now.

I've also tried changing out my IDE cables, and I've tried three different Hard drives (one of which wasn't in the computer when I cleaned it.)

Well, I've taken everything out again, reinstalled all of the minimal hardware, and its still not working...

Could it be the motherboard? It was never taken from the case, and I'm having the same trouble with multiple hard drives...

Any suggestions? Please?

...possibly, when you strapped/pulled your cables outta the way, you inadvertently pulled one wire out of the connector, as in if you have a 4 wire molex, only three are actually connecting. Same goes for any connector, doesn't take much for one of the wires/plug ends to pull out of the "body", for lack of a better word, and mess up your power supply to just one component, which may be the puppy that's bitin yur azz...

...check all your plugs, make sure they are pushed in and connecting, from the backside, could be all you need to do is give one plug a push with a screwdriver, an yur back in action. I hope it's somethin as simple as that, check em out...

try unplugging everything and booting up with just memory and video card in and then add components one by one

check the cable, IDE cable is such bastards, they can be easily mess up, sometimes the pins are just pulled out a little that you can't notice but it won't transfer, atleast it won't do it right.

If you removed your Heatsink, I would recheck your temps in your BIOS (if you can access it). Also check your voltages.

If possible I would reflash your BIOS since it may have become corrupted during the first BSOD. If you can access your BIOS, I would reset it and make sure everything is running at stock speed.

Also try a different IDE cable, and make sure the Harddrive gets it own power cable. Don't share it with fans or anything else.

In my opinion this problem has nothing to do with the harddrive (which you have pretty much already proven). If the BIOS crashed, then you must be running a setting way too high, the heatsink is not seated right, or voltages are way way too low.
I guess a bad hardrive could crash a Bios if you tried to autodetect it, but you would have mentioned that.

There is a remote chance that the back of the motherboard is making contact with the case causing a short. In any case this should cause the board to burn up, but its worth looking into.

In order to check the health of the motherboard, I would boot up without any RAM. Assuming you have a speaker connected to the motherboard, you should get sometype of beep. If you hear nothing, double check that your speaker is hooked up right and if it is then you probably have a corrupted BIOS.

I got it fixed!! (Even though, I'm still not totally sure what was wrong).

I gutted the case again, leaving the mobo in place. I checked all of the molex connectors on the PSU, everything was in fine shape, nothing was loose. I connected a single stick of RAM, my HD, my cdrom, and my mobo. It booted up like a charm!! (Fast too!). I installed Windows, and then started piecing it back together, one part at a time.

Without drawing it out, I'm running all of my original components.

I'm not sure what was wrong, but its working now!

Thank you guys, for your help and suggestions!!

Did you have any fans connected to the 3pin motherboard headers? That's what caused my WindowsXP to boot insanely slow, if at all. And the first time I blamed it on my mobo Good to hear you got it fixed though.