Yesterday I formatted my PC, so i could add a smaller system drive, and then use 3 IDE HDD's and 1 DVD-RW. heres the setup i did; Primary IDE master - System Drive Primary IDE slave - Applications Drive (empty) Secondary IDE master - Docs drive (half full/half empty, up2u) Secondary IDE slave - DVD-RW First boot from format, everything seemed snappy and fast, no problems. I started installing a few drivers, for nothing major, other than the nVidia hardware firewall on my DFI Lanparty MB, and the basic MB drivers. Upon a required reboot, the machine now takes an immense 15 minutes to boot. My system spec; LAN PARTY UT nF3 250Gb AMD 3000+ 64bit 1.5gb OCZ platinum release 2 Now, last time i had my system running well, i didnt use the embedded firewall. Im a biy of a newB to firewalls, i believed the best protection was caution, until i got phooked by a trojan. Is this kind of firewall likely to cause my machine to take a lifetime to boot? If not does anyone know why it is doing this? Is it because im trying to run 3 IDE HDD's instead of taking advantage of sATA? P...p...p..please help! Thanks greatly (also this is a quickie from a collegue in my office, he has a very similar Rig to mine above, apart from the Mboard which he cant remember. When he boots, it says he is running a dual processor, when in fact, he is running a AMD 3000+ 64. We know its not running dual bacause A: No board will take 2 AMD chips, he doesnt HAVE 2 AMD chips! lol. It seems to run fine, Its just a little brainteaser. Any ideas?)
1st of all tell your collegue that i recommend he finds out the make/model of his motherboard and updates it to the latest Bios. This should solve his problem. No, your Inbuilt Firewall will not be the problem, to me this sounds like one of two posibilities: 1. The hard drive you have installed is damaged / faulty 2. Your powersupply isn't providing enough power to the Voltage Rail which the hard drives use Your hard drive however, must be working as you CAN boot - despite times, i would highy recommend that you try a different (more powerful) powersupply. If you don't have one to hand i would disconnect anything new you have added, or just disconnect all your hard drives except your Primary IDE Hard drive (the one with your OS on it). If your system boots fine, then you know its a power issue, if it doesn't then you know that it's either the hard drive thats the problem or the IDE cable might be damaged. Try a different IDE cable (one you know works - or one thats new). If it still doesnt work running your new IDE Cable (with just the 1 hard drive still), you know its the hard drive for sure, so you need to ditch it. *Note You have a nice spec system, i really would not recommend running IDE hard drives as you'll be bottlenecking the performance of your system due to the speed of them. I would personally purchase a 120GB+ SATA Hard drive, and partition it - OR you can buy 2x80GB SATA hard drives, set them to RAID 0 so they act as one 160GB hard drive, (meaning 100% quicker access / read / write / search times), and partition.
The system drive is ok, its never been problematic, and its always been a reliable system in other machines about the flat. I tried uninstalling the firewall, no joy there. The IDE cables are less than two months old, so i hope they're ok, they work on other combinations, and everything is being picked up in the bios. Its interesting you say power. As of last night, it only boots 50% of the time, which is a pain as it takes 30 or so minutes to find out if its going to go or not! lol. Also when it does, the DVD rom isnt on the system, but is in the bios. heres my rig the best i remember; LAN PARTY UT nF3 250Gb 3000+ AMD 64 1.5gb OCZ Platinum series 2 20gb Seatgate 7200 (sys xp) 40gb max diamond 7200 (empty) 80gb max diamond 7200 (@ 50% cap.) Gforce 4200Ti (Running Dual) Linksys Wireless PCI Adapter Sony DVD-RW-+/- Dual Layer Blah blah 3 1/4 Flop Webcam! 2x USB mice! Wireless cheap and naaaasty keyboard Case with 2 5 1/4 Fans and USB on front (USB powered but unused) How easy is Sata to install and maintain? I consider myself quite able with PC's despite my lack of deep knowledge. Cheers
SATA is really no harder than IDE. Since no version of Windows supports SATA out of the box, you will need to provide SATA drivers for the SATA controller on the motherboard or add-in card. What power supply do you have? Specifically the brand and the model
Off hand, all i can tell you is thats its gold and 500w! if you can throw me a list/url of manufacturers i might be able to recognise it, i can see the label in my head its yellow! haha. So going sata means new drives yes? Any recommendations or which to buy or where? I have drivers for the board, and am i right in thinking you prompt them when installing windows, at the first blue screen? ta guys
leroy if you take the side panel off and you still can't see who its made by then its a generic 500W - which will have the power of a good quality 250W powersupply - NOT ENOUGH! You ARE experiencing power issues, i suggest any powersupply from: ThermalTake Antec OCZ Enermax Tagan Anything from 450W-600W from these. as your running SLI (power hungry 2 graphics cards). If you don't get a good powersupply you risk SERIOUSlY damaging your components if you havn't already.
heya, well now im at home by my PC i can tell you its a Q-TECH 550W Dual Fan PSU. Ive sorted the problem now as well. Upon reformatting again, i noticed when i installed the nforce3 chipset drivers, It installed IDE SW Drivers, GART Drivers and SMBUS Drivers. I know the SW drivers are supposed to reduce the bottlnecking in IDE setups. The other 2 i know nothing about. But they dont affect anythjing, that ive noticed anyways. Any ideas wha tthey are? Or why the SW drivers mash everything up, or what i can do to stop it?
SW drivers should ideally be loaded, along with all drivers, download and install the latest version. And i'm almost 100% sure that it's actually your powersupply.
ok, i'll invest in a new power supply. But in this case, its 110% the SW drivers, i have installed them again, and were back to stage 1. uninstall, and we boot quick. Any idea on nthe GART drivers? or the SMBUS?
