Anyone remember how I said my computer was out of action for a few months due to a dead mobo. So after screwing around on newegg for a few hours trying to get my shipping and billing addresses to work I finally ordered the motherboard successfully. Looking for something that would support my AGP 8x vid card and something really cheap, but not junky or poorly rated I settled on a Gigabyte K8 Triton GA-K8U-939 (ULi M1689 chipset) mobo and got it today. The good news. The motherboard really did make a difference. It was a little cramped to work with but I was actually able to turn my computer on first try which was a relief. Then I couldn't get any keyboard or mouse responce. Weird I tried a few different keyboards and mice and swapped a few usb ports and eventually it worked for no apparent reason. Once that was underway I saw that there was a problem as I suspected with the OS so I went to try safe mode. I got a huge sting of random root files or something with a bunch of sys32 extentions and whatnot and rebooted. I tried that last know good config and that ended with a very quick BSOD and a automatic reboot. So I had to fiddle around in the BIOS and set my 1st boot priority to CD ROM as opposed to HDD and I inserted my XP disk. Thankfully it allowed me to boot off that disk. It loaded everything up and finally asked me what I wanted to do. I hit R for repair and lo and behold no hard drive was recognized. I double checked my connections but indeed it appeared my HDD was dead and I wasn't hearing any noise from it so looks like I'll need to buy a new one. Oh joy. Wish me luck with this one. I'd try and add in a new cheapo vid card that's a bit better than my old 6800 but I doubt I'll get that far with my parents.
Did you check your HDD in BIOS? Coz it might be possible that IDE cable you are using is not good. Try swapping your CD Rom Cable with your HDD cable.... 1 more thing, meanwhile if you dont have any computer or way to access to the internet, you can use Linux live CD to acess the internet and do other stuff....
Well, the ULi chipsets are supposed to be pretty good from what I've heard. It's a shame nVidia bought them out.
I'm actually somewhat pleased in a weird sort of way that I'm able to replace some hardware. I hear you Karanislove and those are good suggestions but I already went and ordered a new HDD last night. I got this one: Seagate Barracuda 7200.9 SATA NCQ 3Gb/s 160GB 3.5" SATA 3.0Gb/s Hard Drive - OEM at Newegg.com Looked good to me, I'm impressed with how the seagate I used in my friends rig worked out for him and 160 is more than enough, especially for $57, great deal. Hope it works out for me.
I've picked up that same drive about a month ago to add more storage and so far so good. I also snagged the 80GB version for my other system when the two Maxtors died.
Nice dude, my computer life is one the rise again, after a brief brush with dispair. I got the hard drive today and popped it in only to have it be rejected again and the windows setup tell me it detected no harddrive. But after a bit of grief and pondering I busted out my epic bios maneuver and changed the OnChip SATA mode from RAID to IDE and it worked like a charm, windows in installing now and I created a separte partition for Linux if I felt like messing with that or I loose my major partion to some stupid crash visus thing again. I'm been without a function PC for several months now so it's pretty cool to be back in the running.
