Computer Help

[TUalum0982]

Last October I decided to try my hand at building a computer, ordered everything from newegg and enlisted the help of a coworker to help me build it.  All is fine until a few weeks after and I had to replace one of the hard drives under warranty through seagate.  To make a long story short, I originally had two 320GB HD's on the system, after replacing one of them 5 times under warranty I finally gave up and was down to the one.  The past few weeks I keep having errors where my computer won't boot up and have to go into setup to change things in CMOS and BIOS.  Now I currently have a 2.4ghz intel chipset on a MSI motherboard with 4gb ram.  I was having a "DHCP error" and I finally got that to go away.  Now it will act like its booting up but instead of coming to the login screen, its just a blank screen.  I will never ever ever buy another seagate product as I have had nothing but trouble with them since day 1.  Any ideas? is my HD shot?

Thanks for the help.  I am running Vista if that helps.

[sgrizzle]

I'm betting your HD was fine the entire time and your motherboard is shot. With current motherboards having so much integrated, motherboard problems can manifest themselves in odd ways. I thought I had a bad DVD drive until I replaced it, only to find out that no drive would function properly hooked to that IDE connection. I'm going to assume your LAN is onboard as well, so every issue you describe ties to the motherboard.

MSI is an okay brand, but not necessarily the best brand. There are far worse but a few better ones. Chipset manufacturer can be an issue as well in terms of quality.

[TUalum0982]

quote:Originally posted by sgrizzle

I'm betting your HD was fine the entire time and your motherboard is shot. With current motherboards having so much integrated, motherboard problems can manifest themselves in odd ways. I thought I had a bad DVD drive until I replaced it, only to find out that no drive would function properly hooked to that IDE connection. I'm going to assume your LAN is onboard as well, so every issue you describe ties to the motherboard.

MSI is an okay brand, but not necessarily the best brand. There are far worse but a few better ones. Chipset manufacturer can be an issue as well in terms of quality.

so what would you suggest? replacing the motherboard? then I would have to go back and setup bios completely again? I really want to avoid erasing my HD if at all possible as I have alot of important documents such as tax information, and work related reports.  Thanks for the help sgrizzle.

[cannon_fodder]

I've had as much luck with Seagate as I have Western Digital, in spite of people swearing one way or the other.  When I read your story the first thing that popped into my mind was that something was off along the way... not in the HD itself.  The failure rate of HDs within the warranty period is under 1%, so to have 2 or 3 let alone 5 fail definitely indicates a problem elsewhere.

- Could me mounting (vertical mount, vibration?)
- Power supply (that hookup surging?)
- Mother board
- or heat

I'm no expert, but those are best guesses.  NOT repeated bad HDs.


Not that you care but I have
a Western Digital 250gig
A Seagate 250gig
and an external Seagate 500gig

The external is my music drive with itunes and the library  installed to run off of it.  I don't need 500gigs, but it was on sale and being able to brag about a a full terrabyte is cool (with nerds).  One 250 drive has two partitions:  Windows and Programs.  The remaining drive is storage: downloads, graphics, movies and other files.  It's disturbing how fast you can fill 250 gigs with a handful of backed up DVDs (have children, will destroy DVDs).

Add my iPod, dual DVDs, a floppy drive (needed it at one point, may as well keep it), and a 4 unit card reader and my computer thinks it has drives A: - J: (actually lettered different.  W for windows, P for programs S for storage etc. but bah!).  Makes me chuckle.

And none of those drives have failed.  Though, the death of my last computer was by a failed Western Digital drive, after 6 years and a ton of abuse.

(I was a computer geek, I haven't been "in" for several years so I'm sure I'm way out of the real loop)

[sgrizzle]

quote:Originally posted by TUalum0982

quote:Originally posted by sgrizzle

I'm betting your HD was fine the entire time and your motherboard is shot. With current motherboards having so much integrated, motherboard problems can manifest themselves in odd ways. I thought I had a bad DVD drive until I replaced it, only to find out that no drive would function properly hooked to that IDE connection. I'm going to assume your LAN is onboard as well, so every issue you describe ties to the motherboard.

MSI is an okay brand, but not necessarily the best brand. There are far worse but a few better ones. Chipset manufacturer can be an issue as well in terms of quality.

so what would you suggest? replacing the motherboard? then I would have to go back and setup bios completely again? I really want to avoid erasing my HD if at all possible as I have alot of important documents such as tax information, and work related reports.  Thanks for the help sgrizzle.

You can replace the motherboard without losing your data. If you can tell me what model you have now, I can lookup a suitable replacement.

Vista may require you to reactivate, however.

[inteller]

I hope you are running Vista x64 if you plan on using all 4gb.

And you should only be buying Asus hardware.  There is a reason the major manufacturers (HP, Dell) source Asus for their motherboards.

MSI stands for More Sh*tty Incompentence.  It is the kind of dreck they like to push at PC Club.

[grahambino]

i have a seagate and wd hdd in my computer right now.  i dont really have a preference, as i've never had problems w/ any.  I think i had a samsung drive fail in 2000-2001.  Ive had one fail at my first job, I cant remember what brand it was.  I had a couple fail at my second job, they were SCSI drives and someone them piled on top of each other, and they got extremely hot.  

it really could be a number of things, CF mentioned them.

most of the time, all you need to use in your BIOS settings are the 'optimized defaults' or even just  defaults', if you dont know what else to use.

i cannot stress to you the importance of getting a high quality power supply.  I've really had good luck w/ Antec, though thats just my opinion.  I've not really used any other brand for the past 6-7 years. i don't know a lot about intel chipsets or boards, since all my builds have been AMD.
i'd say at least a 450-500w power supply would be necessary for that.

What power supply are you using?

and if youre getting a DHCP error...in windows?
that's a networking issue  its how your IP address is assigned.

[sgrizzle]

quote:Originally posted by inteller

I hope you are running Vista x64 if you plan on using all 4gb.

And you should only be buying Asus hardware.  There is a reason the major manufacturers (HP, Dell) source Asus for their motherboards.

MSI stands for More Sh*tty Incompentence.  It is the kind of dreck they like to push at PC Club.

That's what I was gonna look up, an Asus board that will take his memory/cpu.

[TUalum0982]

quote:Originally posted by sgrizzle

quote:Originally posted by TUalum0982

quote:Originally posted by sgrizzle

I'm betting your HD was fine the entire time and your motherboard is shot. With current motherboards having so much integrated, motherboard problems can manifest themselves in odd ways. I thought I had a bad DVD drive until I replaced it, only to find out that no drive would function properly hooked to that IDE connection. I'm going to assume your LAN is onboard as well, so every issue you describe ties to the motherboard.

MSI is an okay brand, but not necessarily the best brand. There are far worse but a few better ones. Chipset manufacturer can be an issue as well in terms of quality.

so what would you suggest? replacing the motherboard? then I would have to go back and setup bios completely again? I really want to avoid erasing my HD if at all possible as I have alot of important documents such as tax information, and work related reports.  Thanks for the help sgrizzle.

You can replace the motherboard without losing your data. If you can tell me what model you have now, I can lookup a suitable replacement.

Vista may require you to reactivate, however.

thanks for all the help everyone.  I am tied up at work, but in a bit I will pull up my order on newegg and post that list here for you.  Once again, thanks for the help.  I didnt want to A, go pay someone alot of money to tell me the problem or B buy a whole new comp.

once again thanks.  I will post my setup shortly.

here is my motherboard.  It is a MSI P965 Neo-F LGA 775 Intel P965 Express ATX Intel Motherboard.  Also, it's an intel core 2 duo e6600 conroe 2.4ghz. Ram is G-skillG.SKILL 2GB (2 x 1GB) 240-Pin DDR2 SDRAM DDR2 800 (PC2 6400) Dual Channel Kit Desktop Memory   If you want the whole list, I can fax it over to you.  After looking at my order, wow, how prices can change in a 6 month period!

Thanks for the help again guys.

[EricP]

From the newegg reviews, I'd say if you are using PATA (the wide ribbon cables) to connect your hard drives, you should not buy another one of these boards.. it seems the IDE controller for those ports is flawed and was likely the cause of your hard drive issues. You should be able to find one with excellent ratings on newegg for pretty cheap and get everything working smoothly again. You MIGHT be able to get off easy with a BIOS update if you haven't ever updated it.. you might not.

Depending on how many PCI slots you need, one of these with an even newer chipset that would support future upgrades better would be a good choice:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813128084
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813128059

Here's some of the dirt on your existing board:
"the BIOS mine shipped with was all sorts of flaky, an update fixed most issues though."

"The RAID on this mobo only works with 1 SATA port and the single IDE port. In other words you can NOT RAID two SATA drives. MSI generally makes great boards but I think this one is a dud. I am avoiding all boards with JMicron controllers forever."

"I had to replace this board from my customers machine and have ate the cost but will hold onto it and wait for the bios release to come down merely because it has good qualities if the fix will take care of the issues or RAID for pata and a sata drive and make it sata to sata."

"Avoid the Jmicron controller on any board at all costs. On this board, using an ide optical drive forces PIO mode, you CANNOT use DMA/UDMA! With only PIO mode support, you will poll the processor and slow the sytem down any time you access the drive."

"JMicron PATA/SATA controller is the worthless, it would have been better to not include it at all, conflicts with the Intel SATA controller on boot, PATA shows up as SCSI so DVD/CD programs don't know what to do with it. Can't completely disable it ether. BIOS was very poorly programmed, labels the SATA as master and slave and the devices attached to the JMicron controller don't even show up. Motherboard layout is terrible, FDD connector is below the expansion slots, the power and +12 has to wrap around the CPU. SATA and PATA connectors on the mobo is low quality. Memory support really bad also. Had the worse time trying to get XP w/SP2 to install on a SATA drive."

[TUalum0982]

quote:Originally posted by grahambino

i have a seagate and wd hdd in my computer right now.  i dont really have a preference, as i've never had problems w/ any.  I think i had a samsung drive fail in 2000-2001.  Ive had one fail at my first job, I cant remember what brand it was.  I had a couple fail at my second job, they were SCSI drives and someone them piled on top of each other, and they got extremely hot.  

it really could be a number of things, CF mentioned them.

most of the time, all you need to use in your BIOS settings are the 'optimized defaults' or even just  defaults', if you dont know what else to use.

i cannot stress to you the importance of getting a high quality power supply.  I've really had good luck w/ Antec, though thats just my opinion.  I've not really used any other brand for the past 6-7 years. i don't know a lot about intel chipsets or boards, since all my builds have been AMD.
i'd say at least a 450-500w power supply would be necessary for that.

What power supply are you using?

and if youre getting a DHCP error...in windows?
that's a networking issue  its how your IP address is assigned.

I am using Antec SmartPower 2.0 SP-500 ATX12V 500W Power Supply 115/ 230 V TUV, UL, CUL, CE, CB, FCC - Retail.  The DHCP error I got resolved simply by changing the boot priority.  It had one of my 500gb external harddrives as the first one listed, when it should have been the internal 320gb seagate barracuda drive.  Would this MB not be warranted by MSI? If it is, they will just replace it with another MSI compatible board correct? Should I just cut my losses and get an antec?

Thanks guys!

[TUalum0982]

quote:Originally posted by EricP

From the newegg reviews, I'd say if you are using PATA (the wide ribbon cables) to connect your hard drives, you should not buy another one of these boards.. it seems the IDE controller for those ports is flawed and was likely the cause of your hard drive issues. You should be able to find one with excellent ratings on newegg for pretty cheap and get everything working smoothly again. You MIGHT be able to get off easy with a BIOS update if you haven't ever updated it.. you might not.

Depending on how many PCI slots you need, one of these with an even newer chipset that would support future upgrades better would be a good choice:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813128084
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813128059

Here's some of the dirt on your existing board:
"the BIOS mine shipped with was all sorts of flaky, an update fixed most issues though."

"The RAID on this mobo only works with 1 SATA port and the single IDE port. In other words you can NOT RAID two SATA drives. MSI generally makes great boards but I think this one is a dud. I am avoiding all boards with JMicron controllers forever."

"I had to replace this board from my customers machine and have ate the cost but will hold onto it and wait for the bios release to come down merely because it has good qualities if the fix will take care of the issues or RAID for pata and a sata drive and make it sata to sata."

"Avoid the Jmicron controller on any board at all costs. On this board, using an ide optical drive forces PIO mode, you CANNOT use DMA/UDMA! With only PIO mode support, you will poll the processor and slow the sytem down any time you access the drive."

"JMicron PATA/SATA controller is the worthless, it would have been better to not include it at all, conflicts with the Intel SATA controller on boot, PATA shows up as SCSI so DVD/CD programs don't know what to do with it. Can't completely disable it ether. BIOS was very poorly programmed, labels the SATA as master and slave and the devices attached to the JMicron controller don't even show up. Motherboard layout is terrible, FDD connector is below the expansion slots, the power and +12 has to wrap around the CPU. SATA and PATA connectors on the mobo is low quality. Memory support really bad also. Had the worse time trying to get XP w/SP2 to install on a SATA drive."

both cables are thin in width, they are both SATA HD's.  Guess I will spend the 90 bucks on the new motherboard and swap over the CPU and RAM.  I have never swapped out the MB, is that all I really need to be concerned about? Just swapping over those and the cables and I should go into the BIOS and hit "default settings"?

[sgrizzle]

quote:Originally posted by TUalum0982

quote:Originally posted by EricP

From the newegg reviews, I'd say if you are using PATA (the wide ribbon cables) to connect your hard drives, you should not buy another one of these boards.. it seems the IDE controller for those ports is flawed and was likely the cause of your hard drive issues. You should be able to find one with excellent ratings on newegg for pretty cheap and get everything working smoothly again. You MIGHT be able to get off easy with a BIOS update if you haven't ever updated it.. you might not.

Depending on how many PCI slots you need, one of these with an even newer chipset that would support future upgrades better would be a good choice:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813128084
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813128059

Here's some of the dirt on your existing board:
"the BIOS mine shipped with was all sorts of flaky, an update fixed most issues though."

"The RAID on this mobo only works with 1 SATA port and the single IDE port. In other words you can NOT RAID two SATA drives. MSI generally makes great boards but I think this one is a dud. I am avoiding all boards with JMicron controllers forever."

"I had to replace this board from my customers machine and have ate the cost but will hold onto it and wait for the bios release to come down merely because it has good qualities if the fix will take care of the issues or RAID for pata and a sata drive and make it sata to sata."

"Avoid the Jmicron controller on any board at all costs. On this board, using an ide optical drive forces PIO mode, you CANNOT use DMA/UDMA! With only PIO mode support, you will poll the processor and slow the sytem down any time you access the drive."

"JMicron PATA/SATA controller is the worthless, it would have been better to not include it at all, conflicts with the Intel SATA controller on boot, PATA shows up as SCSI so DVD/CD programs don't know what to do with it. Can't completely disable it ether. BIOS was very poorly programmed, labels the SATA as master and slave and the devices attached to the JMicron controller don't even show up. Motherboard layout is terrible, FDD connector is below the expansion slots, the power and +12 has to wrap around the CPU. SATA and PATA connectors on the mobo is low quality. Memory support really bad also. Had the worse time trying to get XP w/SP2 to install on a SATA drive."

both cables are thin in width, they are both SATA HD's.  Guess I will spend the 90 bucks on the new motherboard and swap over the CPU and RAM.  I have never swapped out the MB, is that all I really need to be concerned about? Just swapping over those and the cables and I should go into the BIOS and hit "default settings"?

Replacing the motherboard involves a lot of screws but it's not that hard. If you had it with you I'd say to bring it to lunch tomorrow and I'd swap it out. The BIOS should autodetect most everything by default.

On first boot, the PC will detect a lot of new hardware and vista may want to reactivate, but it's not too complicated. MSI may warranty your old board if the warranty isn't expired. However, you'd get the same model board after you've had no PC for a month or so.

[EricP]

quote:Originally posted by TUalum0982

both cables are thin in width, they are both SATA HD's.  Guess I will spend the 90 bucks on the new motherboard and swap over the CPU and RAM.  I have never swapped out the MB, is that all I really need to be concerned about? Just swapping over those and the cables and I should go into the BIOS and hit "default settings"?

Pretty much.. might auto detect the hard drives or something. You could end up having to reinstall/reactivate your OS as well, I'm not sure how Vista reacts. I think I would have somebody troubleshoot the system before just going and buying a new motherboard. Maybe you just need a BIOS update and to comb over some settings.

[TUalum0982]

quote:Originally posted by sgrizzle

quote:Originally posted by TUalum0982

quote:Originally posted by EricP

From the newegg reviews, I'd say if you are using PATA (the wide ribbon cables) to connect your hard drives, you should not buy another one of these boards.. it seems the IDE controller for those ports is flawed and was likely the cause of your hard drive issues. You should be able to find one with excellent ratings on newegg for pretty cheap and get everything working smoothly again. You MIGHT be able to get off easy with a BIOS update if you haven't ever updated it.. you might not.

Depending on how many PCI slots you need, one of these with an even newer chipset that would support future upgrades better would be a good choice:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813128084
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813128059

Here's some of the dirt on your existing board:
"the BIOS mine shipped with was all sorts of flaky, an update fixed most issues though."

"The RAID on this mobo only works with 1 SATA port and the single IDE port. In other words you can NOT RAID two SATA drives. MSI generally makes great boards but I think this one is a dud. I am avoiding all boards with JMicron controllers forever."

"I had to replace this board from my customers machine and have ate the cost but will hold onto it and wait for the bios release to come down merely because it has good qualities if the fix will take care of the issues or RAID for pata and a sata drive and make it sata to sata."

"Avoid the Jmicron controller on any board at all costs. On this board, using an ide optical drive forces PIO mode, you CANNOT use DMA/UDMA! With only PIO mode support, you will poll the processor and slow the sytem down any time you access the drive."

"JMicron PATA/SATA controller is the worthless, it would have been better to not include it at all, conflicts with the Intel SATA controller on boot, PATA shows up as SCSI so DVD/CD programs don't know what to do with it. Can't completely disable it ether. BIOS was very poorly programmed, labels the SATA as master and slave and the devices attached to the JMicron controller don't even show up. Motherboard layout is terrible, FDD connector is below the expansion slots, the power and +12 has to wrap around the CPU. SATA and PATA connectors on the mobo is low quality. Memory support really bad also. Had the worse time trying to get XP w/SP2 to install on a SATA drive."

both cables are thin in width, they are both SATA HD's.  Guess I will spend the 90 bucks on the new motherboard and swap over the CPU and RAM.  I have never swapped out the MB, is that all I really need to be concerned about? Just swapping over those and the cables and I should go into the BIOS and hit "default settings"?

Replacing the motherboard involves a lot of screws but it's not that hard. If you had it with you I'd say to bring it to lunch tomorrow and I'd swap it out. The BIOS should autodetect most everything by default.

On first boot, the PC will detect a lot of new hardware and vista may want to reactivate, but it's not too complicated. MSI may warranty your old board if the warranty isn't expired. However, you'd get the same model board after you've had no PC for a month or so.

I will need to go ahead and buy the MB from newegg and wait till it gets here.  I appreciate all your help.  Could we possibly meet up somewhere when it comes in to do the swap? I would buy ya lunch or a beer, whatever you want. Thanks