Thank you for being a valued part of the CNET community. As of December 1, 2020, the forums are in read-only format. In early 2021, CNET Forums will no longer be available. We are grateful for the participation and advice you have provided to one another over the years.

Thanks,

CNET Support

General discussion

ReBoot to Detecting IDE Drives

Feb 16, 2004 2:31AM PST

My sys boots just fine from power-off, but hangs on reboot. AMD Athlon 2100, Matsonic MS8147C MB, 300w PS.
Any & all help appreciated.
Bruce

Discussion is locked

- Collapse -
Re:ReBoot to Detecting IDE Drives
Feb 16, 2004 2:45AM PST

I would expect such an overtaxed power supply to show many such issues. That alone may or may not be your issue.

Other issues are:

1. BIOS. Latest only or suffer.
2. Some other item in the brew. I once found a bad USB device that stopped the reboot. Hitting reset was the final workaround since a) it worked, b) cheap fix.

Bob

- Collapse -
Re:Re:ReBoot to Detecting IDE Drives
Feb 16, 2004 6:03AM PST

I apologize for the typo, PS = 350w. I also have two HD's 40G & 2.5G Plus CDROM & CDRW and 2 addn'l case fans. Being a dinosaur, and having 350w instead of 180-200w, Problems with the PS never entered my head.

- Collapse -
Re:Re:ReBoot to Detecting IDE Drives
Feb 16, 2004 6:07AM PST

Thanks, Bob for your help and quick response.

- Collapse -
Re:Re:Re:ReBoot to Detecting IDE Drives
Feb 16, 2004 6:22AM PST

1. http://www.tomshardware.com/howto/20021021/

"It happens more often than many users realize. An old graphics card or a slow processor runs smoothly and without a peep for weeks, and then suddenly, after a system upgrade, system failures start occurring with nasty regularity. Frequently users blame problems like this on sloppily programmed drivers or hardware mined with errors."

Read the rest.

2. http://www.tomshardware.com/howto/20021021/

"THG continues to receive hundreds of e-mails regarding the causes of sudden and sometimes frequent "crashes" of users' computers and computer systems. As these computer crashes are random and unpredictable, users are losing important data and other critical information as a result. These issues of "stability" can cost hours of use time while the system is continued to be tinkered with in vain in an effort to resolve the issue. When this occurs, ambitious users are inclined to search for the cause in the processor settings, system memory or on the motherboard, since the Front Side Bus, CPU core voltage and GPU of the graphics card are often pushed to the limit to achieve maximum performance. This results in the user resetting all of the system parameters to default values - but to no avail. The computer continues to crash, eventually so frequently that it is no longer possible to continue using it."

More fun reading.

In short, even if your 350 Watt unit worked when new, pulling so much from it ages it quickly and its capacity dwindles to about 70 percent of new in the first year or less. I can't tell if this is your issue today, but it does continue to show up in the 300 and 350 Watt units daily.

The in-shop test is to just pull up a 450 (or larger) PSU, attach it (we don't unbolt the old unit) and see if the problem vanishes.

Bob