[Fury]

Well, if the computer sometimes does not POST at all, take your pick:
- Motherboard
- PSU
- RAM
- CPU

Almost all motherboards howewer should POST but give warnings about faulty CPU or RAM. So my guess is either the mobo or PSU.

Faulty HDD shouldn't prevent the system from POSTing, because it does not read any data from HDD at that point.

Howewer, it does not read out the possibility that HDD or any other component might be damaged, because faulty PSU's can damage other components as well. Rarely howewer faulty mobo damages anything except maybe data being written.

I have a feeling your system is self-built because you haven't yet taken it to a service under warranty. So your best bet is to call a few friends and ask them to bring their systems for testing, or you can take your computer to them and switch components until you can confirm what the problem is and RMA it if the warranty is still valid. Make no mistake, faulty PSU or mobo is not easy to track down because it may not have any immediate effect to a new HDD or other components.

Howewer, try to check the PSU with a voltage meter or somesuch to see if there are any irregularities. PSU's must always give steady amount of power, otherwise fluctuations will damage other hardware.

With self-built systems there is this possibility and this is why people who have not prepared for this possibilty would be better to buy prebuilt systems from a store.

I hope you get the system up and running properly again.

[Ghostavo]

I've had Maxtor's since I can remember... it's not bad...

I've had 360 gigs (3x120) for 2 years now and it works fine.

[J3Vr6]

What's a PSU?

[Odyssey]

[color=cc9900]Power supply unit. At the back of the computer.[/color]

[J3Vr6]

ugh... so how do I figure out how big of a "PSU" I need it to be?

This is becoming such drama.

[Odyssey]

[color=cc9900]I really would recommend dumping your HD into someone else's computer as a slave before you go screwing around with a multimeter near PSU's. If you're prepared to hoist the cash around (it's only £20, which is $36 or so) to get a new PSU, go ahead. 400+ Watts would be a safe bet. Can you tell us what the wattage of your current one is? It should say somewhere on it.[/color]

[J3Vr6]

I have no idea what the current power supply is, I think probably in the 300's.

[Liberator]

400 watts minimum.  You can probably get a whole case for what most places want though.

[Odyssey]

[color=cc9900]If you've got huge quantities of things running from the PSU, then that might cause problems. Have you got any USB devices? With an extensive array of USB ports, it's possible to severely tax a PSU. Or any heavy duty internal devices?[/color]

[J3Vr6]

Um I got 2 harddrives, a CD player, a CD Burner, a USB bracket thing, another set of USB's that I have my joystick connected to, and a fan that doesn't really do anything (whre you connected it in the case doesn't really have good ventilation so it doesn't circulate much).  Other than that, my video card and my sound blaster live 5.1.

[Odyssey]

[color=cc9900]I don't think it's a power supply problem, then. Unless your video card is one of the types that reqires inordinate amounts of power.[/color]

[kasperl]

what card is it? a GeForce or a Radeon?

[J3Vr6]

It's a Geforce 2, 32 megger.

Listen to this one:  I get home from work yesterday and decide to do the following:  run scandisk, update the BIOS, update my video drivers, patch I-War2 (just in case it was that), and reinstall Windows 98SE.

Mind you, the day before I could barely keep the computer on, let alone try to do anything on it.  But when I turned it on last night, it seemed like it was back to normal.  I was on it for like 2 hours doing everything to it.  I ran the scan disk and it worked fine, so now I'm wondering if wasn't the harddrive since it didn't crash then.

The bios update went without a hitch.  When I reinstalled windows, I didn't format the harddrive and only installed it over the existing 98.  Why?  Cuz I have no idea how to format a harddrive and I don't have the Win 98 cd (my bro in law, when installing it the first time, put all the CAB files and whatnot in a directory).  I had one error, and that was cuz I forgot to disable norton antivirus, but I got thru that.  When I finished installing it, I would sometimes get BSOD with fatal exception errors, seemed like they would come in batches.  Then I'd restart and the computer would be fine.  It's probably cuz I haven't done a Windows Update (kinda hard when I'm not hooked up to the internet).

I do everything else and leave my computer running for a little while.  No problems.  It seemed like it was running as new.  I was even getting better resource management by 1% (no big deal I guess).

Then I shut down and go watch Enterprise.  I come back to it later, and BOOM.  Same crap as before:  Windows protection error, please restart.  If not, it's the dynamic link VxD crap that tells me to run windows set-up.

It doesn't even let me into Windows thru safe mode.  Going step-by-step start up, it seems to crash and shut down at loading windows GUI.  Then it won't let me post forever.

[Setekh]

Originally posted by J3Vr6
It doesn't even let me into Windows thru safe mode.  Going step-by-step start up, it seems to crash and shut down at loading windows GUI.  Then it won't let me post forever.

Oh man, that's deeply screwed. I'm more confused that it lets you into the GUI first and then it crashes. Hold up, is this after a fresh Windows re-install?

[J3Vr6]

Yeah, after.  But it had restarted a few times *AFTER* the reinstall also and it worked fine.  I put it thru it's paces in terms of starting and restarting and there was no problems.   It was only when I turned off the computer for a couple of hours to eat dinner and watch Enterprise and came back to it that it didn't want to get into Windows.

[Fury]

Setekh, wasn't a fresh install. He installed it over existing W98 installation. He hasn't formatted the drive or anything, which would be preferrable.

[Arc]

Like Mr Fury said, a bad HD shouldn't stop the machine POSTing. As for PSUs, given your specs you could probably run on a 250W - anything in the 300s is fine. Since it's crashed in both pure dos and both windows installs it's not directly any of them either.

What you need to start doing is some hardware diagnosis. If you want to check if it's the HD it's best to do that first (it's the easiest). Replace it with any HD you can lay your hands on that's ok, install windows on it and see.

Otherwise: get hold of a friend's machine that has hardware that can take your ram and cpu. Install one component from your machine into theirs at a time and see if you can isolate the faulty one. Make sure you don't inadvertently damage anything you're working on: Either use an anti-static wriststrap or you can get away with earthing yourself by touching any earthed peice of metal. If you're going to use anti-static bags for holding components while they're out of the machine make sure you put stuff inside the bag not just on top. Before you start it's probably a good idea to disconnect your friend's HD - you don't want to risk their data while you're testing.

You'll need to test the things that you absolutely need to POST: the RAM, CPU , and graphics card. If they seem fine, I'd consider the HD and PSU. I wouldn't really expect them to be source of the problem though. If you do test the PSU I'd suggest either following Mr Fury's advice of checking it with a multimeter or put your friend's PSU into your machine - none of the other components can really do damage to your friend's hardware, but the PSU could.

Just remember to take your time and be methodical. Guessing or assuming will either lead you round in circles or you'll replace the wrong part.

[J3Vr6]

Thanks guys.  I don't know who I should ask since most of my friends don't have AMD setups or are extemely out of date.  The PSU I have is 320watts.  Last night I even unplugged one of the CD players to see if maybe it was that.

I don't have another HD to test with  I was planning on buying a new one but wasn't planning on doing it for a while.

The strange thing is that it will work fine for a really long time but once it crashes in windows, the computer will freak out.  It won't post or I get those VxD's.  If it does posts and go into command prompt, it will freak out after a while.  If I try to do a step by step, it will crash at the GUI part, even in safe mode.  If I let it sit for a long time, then restart it will work again for a while.

Looking thru windows knowledge support, it said it could be a misconfigured CMOS, but I hadn't touched anything in CMOS since and it was working fine for a long time (til I started to play I-War2, actually)

Also, u know when it hangs?  It hangs between early chipset initialization or on the memory, based on the LED lights that come with the D-bracket.  I tried taking out one stick and it didn't do anything.  I tried with the other and still nothing.

The computer was running at like 70 degrees celsius before (remember, I didn't have the paste but bought it like 3 days later) so maybe it's the processor that's bad?

[kasperl]

you have broadband?

if so, get Knoppix, and see what it does. IIRC it had a few extra system utility's for hardware tests.

[Arc]

I'd forgotten you've got diagnostics lights. Can you post the exact message you have from the diagnostics concerning where it stops?

Err..you've got an Athlon 1700xp? It'll should only take damage at over the 90-100 degrees range. 70 is quite high, but I think you should be ok. If it was the high temp itself, you'd be able to boot cold fine and get problems after using it for a while. If it has actually taken heat damage, I'd be surprised that it could operate at all for any length of time.

My best guess here would be flakey RAM. Apparently damage from a static discharge can take a while to become apparent. Did you make sure you were earthed while you were building this machine?