My youngest daughter?s desktop computer is made of used leftovers from upgrades over time of other computers in the house. It had been working okay until I finally decided to finally upgrade it. Here?s how my problem started:
? Replaced the very old slow CD reader (read only) with a much newer but used 8X CD/DVD reader (read only).
? Added a brand new dual layer DVD Liteon reader/writer
? Replaced floppy drive that had been being flagged as faulty at startup for awhile (F1 to continue) with a brand new floppy drive that also has a memory slot compatible with her digital camera memory. Replaced the floppy cable with a new round cable, and added the USB cable that came with the drive for the memory reader?s hookup.
? Cleaned out all the dust bunnies at the case openings and the case fan.
? Cleaned the fans and the heat sinks on the CPU and on an Nvidia chip on the M/B.
So at this point the system looked like this:
? ATX case with 300 Comp USA brand P/S.
? Athlon compatible M/B. Can?t remember the manufacture & can?t find a manufacture name on the board. None of my stack of manuals has a picture that seems to match the layout. It has an nVidia nForce2 chipset and features dual-channel memory, and it also has onboard LAN, nVidia gforce4 440 onboard video, and onboard audio. Serial no. starts with 8NM… if that?s any hint.
? Athlon XP 2500+ retail boxed CPU/fan
? Two sticks of 256Meg PC2700 memory
? Dlink DWL?G520 Wireless card
? Old Pinnacle TV Tuner / Video Input card
? Drives: 8X DVD R; Dual layer 48X/16X DVD +/- R/RW; Floppy
? Windows 2000 Professional
Then: The first 10 or so times I started the modified machine, it sounded like the HD was working normally, but then silence, and the display displayed a no input message momentarily on the screen.
? I wondered if the onboard video had suddenly failed, so I put in an old PCI video card but got the same result. (So I took the PCI video card back out).
? I suspected that maybe the new drives were taking too much power for the 300 W P/S, so I replaced it with an inexpensive 500watt P/S from Comp USA (new ? had on hand). No Change.
? I wondered now that drives may still be taking too much power for the cheap P/S (It had only one 12 volt rail) so I bought another more expensive 470 Watt with dual 12v rails and split the12v load. Again, no Change, but I left the better power supply in anyway.
? I disconnected first one, then the other, finally both of the newly installed DVD drives. No change ? still just a no input message that appeared momentarily on the screen.
? Disconnected the new floppy too, but no change. So I hooked all 3 drives back up.
? Weeks later I began trying again, and to my delight (& amazement) it started displaying the familiar initial startup. It found and identified the onboard video, the memory, all the drives, etc… (I noticed that it found no problem with the new floppy drive ? a good thing.) But when it started loading Windows 2000 from the hard drive, it found a file missing and stopped. (I didn?t write the file name down, and don?t remember it). That happened a couple of times, and then:
? Speculating that maybe the old P/S had been overloaded after all & somehow had damaged the HD (Otherwise what are the chances … ), I installed a new retail boxed Seagate 120 Gig hard drive with a new cable. I had it on hand.
? With a new HD installed as primary & the other HD removed, I inserted the Windows 2000 Professional disc and powered up.
? The machine seemed okay until it reached the point of starting to boot from the Windows 2000 Pro CD where it displays the message in black & white that it was looking at the hardware. It went no further ? just froze.
? Tried many more times, of course. Sometimes it stops there with the message about looking at the hardware, and sometimes it gets just one step further and freezes with words that it?s loading.
? Tried one of my Windows XP CDs and the machine does the same thing as with the Windows 2000 that I?d like to load.
Wow! What now? I don?t have a new spare Athlon XP motherboard sitting around. Thoughts anybody?