what kind of hangs or freezes are you blue screening at all or just dead in the water?

 

no no blue screening just the screen goes black. it doesnt go into stand by the led stays green jus the screen goes black

 

Hmm... lots of stuff going on here...

I have an Asus A8N SLI with the nVidia NFORCE chipset. I'm using a Western Digital WD740GD Raptor 10k RPM SATA drive with the A8N SLi and it works fine.

Western Digital just came out with a new, updated 150gb version of the Raptor. You might be interested in that. It is probably more expensive that the Maxtor, but it is (in my opinion) a far better drive (much faster and higher quality).

Make sure you have the most current version of motherboard firmware. Many SATA issues were resolved by Asus with early firmware updates. I suspect that is the case with ABit too.

So both drives were in the system at the same time? What happened to the last drive that you used this system with? Do you have a good hard drive that will run in this system?

That's what you need to find out.

I would put the IDE drive in the system and do not put the SATA drive in the system. Just the one drive.

I would update the motherboard firmware and follow the link Nuggle gave you... But, I would wait to do that until you have figured out what is wrong.

You have to love The Inquirer... great site...

At this point, I would try to get the system to start and run in its most basic form. Here's what I would do:

Connect the monitor with the VGA connector that you know works. Or if the DVI connection works, try it (not sure what's going on here).

Put in the one stick of memory that passes the POST.

Put in the IDE drive that you originally had in the system and no other drive. If that drive still has the OS on it, I would boot to that OS and see if it runs. If you think that drive is corrupt now, I would FDISK it, Format it, and reload Windows. If that drive is not available, or no good, I would put the new IDE drive into the computer with no other drive. FDISK it, Format it, and load Windows on it.

If that doesn't work, I would download the latest motherboard firmware from ABit. Install it.

If none of that works, I would want to swap out the power supply. The trouble with that is that nobody will have a spare power supply that matches your 550w Antec.

That should give you some stuff to try... Some times this stuff sux... That's why they call it the bleeding edge...

 

where can one find said drive??
last time i tried that the mb didnt like it
guess i could try again though, but i would have to get windows loaded first though so i could flash it
no the ide drive that im trying to use was the one that had teh system on it
i have another ide drive that is good but it is holding all of my papers, mp3, and movies, and everything else i have so there is no way that i am goin to format that drive
thats what i have now.
the sata drive is back in its box and is goin back to comp usa on friday

 

raptors are good high quality and fast i personally have 2 of them and run them in a raid 0..... fast! but i have recently learn and tested that the Nforce4 is the greatest you can if you wanted to put 8 HDDS in a raid 0 or raid 5(raid 5 would be the best but i dont wanna run of topic)... you can just as easy and cheaper buy 4X80GB sata HDDS and run thme in a raid and it will be cheaper then a raptor and about 3X faster.. but if you want the get the raptor just get the 74GB (keep your OS on there) and also get like 200-300Gb as a secondary and dump all your music,movies and stuff there so if your raptor craps out you dont lose stuff and it also helps from bogging down the speed

 

I usually buy my parts mail order at Newegg. CompUSA seems to have Western Digital's 74gb SATA 10k drive, but not the new 150gb version.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16822136012

I usually download the updates that work from a bootable floppy disk. I've never updated a motherboard's firmware from Windows. I suppose it works, I've just never tried it.

Yea, I'd hold off putting that drive back in until I made sure everything was OK.

 

I don't like Raid 0 for single-user systems because you have double the chances for failure than with a single drive. If either drive fails... bad news. It's just my opinion and I don't want to debate it here in this thread.


Hot swappable Raid 5 is hard to beat... but I'm really just trying to help Dan get his system running here...

 

ok so ill take my maxtor back and get that one then on friday.
what time does compusa on dale mabry close??

 

Another idea, if your NF4 board support sata2, try the WD 250gig SATA2 w/ a 16meg buffer, that disk rocks...

 

I don't know... I just looked on their web site. I'm not sure they'd have them in a store. You might call first.

Another thought... were you overclocking anything??? ...video card or CPU? If you were overclocking, I'd move the clock speeds back to standard until everything is sorted out.

Were you able to get the system running with the old hard drive? I'd hate to put a new hard drive in and have the power supply ruin it. I would try to get everything running with the parts you have.

Might be a good time to buy a UPS.

 

yes but all the changes were made threw the abit program that ran in windows. i didnt change any of the settings in the bios. all of the bios settings are in their default states.
no it doesnt run with the old ide hard drive.
i guess i could throw my old 350watt ps in there and give it a try but i doubt its the power supply the 550 is brand new

 

I think it's worth trying. Usually electronic devices fail soon after they are first started up.

Something happened and it ruined the memory. The odds of two sticks of memory going bad at the same time seems remote to me. My guess is that either a power malfunction or a power supply problem caused the memory to fail.

I'm trying to avoid putting new equipment in your computer until the problem is solved. What are the odds that your video card, hard drive, and two sticks of memory all went bad at once for no reason?

 

i dont know prolly pretty small

 

This Thread Is Hella Gey Please Close It. Waste Of Time To Post Here No One Reads This Pointless Thread.

 

you really do have no life dont you