shanenin Posted July 17, 2006 Report Share Posted July 17, 2006 I have been working on this computer. It was origainally brought to me in pretty bad shape, including a wga warning about an illegal copy of XP, and also bluescreening. To start things off I reinstalled with the correct key, now it has a fresh install with no wga warnings. It has been a about a week and it bluescreened. It also failed to reboot, it errored when searching for ide devices. I rebooted into the bios, it said no ide devices were found, either ide0(harddrive) or ide1(dvddrive). I brought the computer home and tried to boot it again, now it is working just fine. My gut says the northbridge(motherboard) is going bad. Since it is working well now, I am not really able to test individual parts by swapping them.Since the ide connection is failing I do not have any dump file to read after it bluescreens.I would appreciate and suggestion or thoughts. Quote Link to post Share on other sites
TheTerrorist_75 Posted July 17, 2006 Report Share Posted July 17, 2006 Were the manufacturer's motherboard drivers installed? Quote Link to post Share on other sites
shanenin Posted July 17, 2006 Author Report Share Posted July 17, 2006 ya but.....on the motherboard I found this printedVNF4/VNF4 ULTRA (no zenith printed)The drivers I installed, including the ide drivers, installed without error, i am pretty sure they were the correct ones. The ones I used made reference zenith also. I did not find any drivers listed for just "VNF4/VNF4 ULTRA" so I used the ones labled "VNF4/VNF4 ULTRA zenith se" here is the linkhttp://www.chaintechusa.com/tw/eng/Downloa...5&PISNo=318Since the bios failed to see the ide drives, before the harddrive or dvdrive were booted, wouldn't that pretty much have to be a hardware problem seprerate of windows drivers? Quote Link to post Share on other sites
TheTerrorist_75 Posted July 17, 2006 Report Share Posted July 17, 2006 Those appear to be the correct drivers. Do the IDE controllers show as OK in Device Manager? Was the Bios ever flashed on this board? Have you changed the Cmos battery? Are the IDE cables any good? Quote Link to post Share on other sites
shanenin Posted July 17, 2006 Author Report Share Posted July 17, 2006 Do the IDE controllers show as OK in Device Manager? according to the device manager, they are fineWas the Bios ever flashed on this board?I am not sure, but doubt it. I did look at the bios updates available, none mentioned fixing any ide problemsHave you changed the Cmos battery?no, but that would be something easy and inexpensive to try. Are the IDE cables any good?he has new looking round cables. Everything is working now, so it is hard to check individual pieces of hardware. Since both ide0 and ide1(seperate cables) quit working(temporarly) at the same time, I doubt individual cables would be to blame. I hate telling people the motherborad is to blame, if I am wrong, I just made a costly error to my customers(and my name). Since both ide channels failed to detect any drives during the bios stage, that seems to point at a bios or hardware problem. Even if the harddisk was bad, the ide1 should have still detected the dvddrive. Quote Link to post Share on other sites
TheTerrorist_75 Posted July 17, 2006 Report Share Posted July 17, 2006 Check the motherboard to see if the screws are loose. Maybe the motherboard shifts and shorts out during the moving. You could also remove everything (vanilla) fron the motherboard except the porcessor then boot it. Listen for a beep or if it has the digital setup see if it goes to FF. Some boards amy require the meory installed. You should get a beep or be able to check the diagnostic LED numbers to see if there are errors. Quote Link to post Share on other sites
shanenin Posted July 17, 2006 Author Report Share Posted July 17, 2006 thanks for your suggestions. I think I am going to give it back to the customer. The next time it blue screens I will have them copy the stop code. As to the dump file, they did not have one. I am guessing if the problem was with th ide controller, writing a dump file to the harddrive would be impossible. Quote Link to post Share on other sites
Honda_Boy Posted July 18, 2006 Report Share Posted July 18, 2006 (edited) another thing to try is to get the driver's straight from nVidia. My experience with EVGA is that the drivers on their site aren't always the newest so I always go to nVidia for my video card and motherboard drivers. The drivers on chaintec's site are grossly outdated. Infact they are a year outdated. They are from July of last year. The most recent drivers are from July 6th this year.I don't really believe th NB is dying but rather something else on the mobo. Unless someone has really screwed it up, a fairly new nForce 4 chip like that shouldn't be dying. I have actually had that happen to me once. I can't remember which of my many computers it happened on but it only happened once and never again. All the systems that could have had that happen are all still running. (I think it was my old PIII Gateway and it still runs). Make sure everything is seated correctly. Make sure the memory isn't bad (sometimes memory can cause extremly strange problems that seem unrelated, it happened to me recently). Make sure all jumpers are in the correct locations on the motherboard too. Edited July 18, 2006 by Honda_Boy Quote Link to post Share on other sites
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