PC went belly up

[Lias]

you're welcome to provide some details. If you image the hdd, and try to dump it onto different hardware/replace hardware without editing install of pc, there is a high chance of OS BSOD'ing.

For me, its often more a case of labour cost to potentially get it working, with an unknown success rate/length of operation, against doing it right from the start. You can do any manner of tricky things, but success can vary, and generally, isn't worth it, unless you're happy to burn away the time finding the exact fault.

Gerbil, you can run one stick of ram, it just doesn't run as fast, but it allows you to accurately identify if any one stick of ram is faulty.

Sorta agree...about 20% chance of going totally tits up. Normally you can just fire it into safe mode, erase most of the drivers then reboot and let it pick them up. Otherwise do a recovery installation. Worth the risk as saves pissing about reinstalling apps and transferring user files/settings.

If the motherboards are identical or similar chipets you can generally do it fine. The most common reason for it BSOD'ing when you change the motherboard is due to the drivers for the IDE controllers. If your new motherboard's chipset uses the same or very similar drivers your sweet (IE from an old VIA board to a slightly newer VIA board).. If you say go from an Intel to a VIA chipset you cant just do a straight swap. Ideally you fire up the PC on the old board, change from the proper drivers to the generic IDE drivers that ship with winblows, and then it should boot on the new platform. Otherwise you reinstall over the top and it should go then.

[RantyDave]

Have a look at your motherboard's capacitors to see if there are leaking. Sounds like it. If it is leaking you need a new motherboard.

Oh, I had one do that, fucking thing. A couple of things about that:

* Dual channel ram probably implies newer than the batch of faulty capacitors that went through.
* It's not obvious. Leaky capacitors have a sort of domed shape to the lid - it's not like they (always) spew toxic shit all over the place.

Mine was a socket 754 from ... albatron? Was a long time ago now and said motherboard is now used as target practice for Tesla coils

Dave

[scracha]

If the motherboards are identical or similar chipets you can generally do it fine. The most common reason for it BSOD'ing when you change the motherboard is due to the drivers for the IDE controllers. If your new motherboard's chipset uses the same or very similar drivers your sweet (IE from an old VIA board to a slightly newer VIA board).. If you say go from an Intel to a VIA chipset you cant just do a straight swap. Ideally you fire up the PC on the old board, change from the proper drivers to the generic IDE drivers that ship with winblows, and then it should boot on the new platform. Otherwise you reinstall over the top and it should go then.

Yup...but this is Microsoft. Sometimes it just DOESN'T work That's when you curse and swear about the 1/2 hour you've wasted doing the recovery install.

[Street Gerbil]

Ok, guys, here comes the update. Memory is fine (fsck you Microsoft for a misleading error message). My present theory is that the problem is either caused by the failure of the onboard SATA/RAID controller or by the system HDD. I've managed to install a fresh copy of xp on a HDD I pulled from a trash bin downtown last weekend. As long as the sata cable is disconnected (and as a result SATA bios is disabled) the system appears stable. As soon as I attempted to re-connect the HDD and load the driver, however, the system went into hard reset.
That sucks big time because it means that either my beautiful 10000rpm Cheeta drive is fried (not to mention two weeks worth of lost downloads), or that I am on the market for a new mobo, cpu, memory, and video adaptor which is a bit over the budget.
Anyhow, folks, thanks for your support. I will keep you updated about my progress.
Thank you everybody for your suggestions so far. As soon as my comp is back from the dead, there will be one hell of a bling distribution party.

[scracha]

That sucks big time because it means that either my beautiful 10000rpm Cheeta drive is fried (not to mention two weeks worth of lost downloads), or that I am on the market for a new mobo, cpu, memory, and video adaptor which is a bit over the budget.

Good excuse to get a core duo processor then :-) . Most Seagate drives have a 5 year warranty. If you don't know who your reseller was though you'll need to send it to Singapore (not that expensive and turnaround time is about 8 days)

http://www.seagate.com/www/en-us/sup...ns_assistance/

[Delphinus]

I may be able to help you with that warranty. When did you buy the drive and can you PM me the serial and model number please?

[Gremlin]

As long as the sata cable is disconnected (and as a result SATA bios is disabled) the system appears stable. As soon as I attempted to re-connect the HDD and load the driver, however, the system went into hard reset.

want to run that by me again? What was the drive that you plugged in to install a test OS? Generally, bios setup wise, you run IDE/something, for non-raid (ie, most normal setups), RAID for RAID, and AHCI for very little (some vista may be compliant, iirc).

I don't think sata drives are truly hot swappable either, well, normal ones anyway. You also say load driver... what driver?

[scracha]

I don't think sata drives are truly hot swappable either, well, normal ones anyway. You also say load driver... what driver?

Certain NAS's and drive enclosures are but don't know any motherboards that allow this. All the mobo's I've used involve having to power down, remove dead drive and then fart around rebuilding the array.

[Street Gerbil]

want to run that by me again? What was the drive that you plugged in to install a test OS? Generally, bios setup wise, you run IDE/something, for non-raid (ie, most normal setups), RAID for RAID, and AHCI for very little (some vista may be compliant, iirc).

I don't think sata drives are truly hot swappable either, well, normal ones anyway. You also say load driver... what driver?

My mobo uses an onboard Promise SATA/RAID controller which I run in SATA mode. In order to use it, the system needs to load a low-level device driver (the one you install with F6 at the first phase of XP installation).
Basically, I installed the OS on the legacy ATA drive and it worked until I plugged the HDD in question and enabled the Promise driver in the device manager. The moment I did it, the system immediately crashed. I am still experimenting with various configurations to see if I can somehow salvage the contents of the HDD but at this point it seems to be a writeoff...
The best part is that I backed up all the data 2 weeks before the crash so data loss is unpleasant but tolerable. At this point my biggest headache is deciding whether to replace this thing with 2 36Gb drives and RAID them or to get one 150Gb drive. Those raptors are still too expensive around here...

[Gremlin]

I am still experimenting with various configurations to see if I can somehow salvage the contents of the HDD but at this point it seems to be a writeoff...

ok... I think I always assumed you only had single drives in the case, no raid. If thats the case, you should be able to plug the drive into a caddy, and connect it via usb, with no issues whatsoever.

Was the existing (and potentially broken) install on a raid? If it wasn't, then you tell the bios to run in ide. You only need the raid driver if you're running raid, and it needs the driver in order to detect the hdd arrangement, to install an OS onto a partition.

edit: also, you have ide drives, or sata drives? and have you looked at any jumper configurations?

[Street Gerbil]

ok... I think I always assumed you only had single drives in the case, no raid.

Yep. No raid.

If thats the case, you should be able to plug the drive into a caddy, and connect it via usb, with no issues whatsoever.

I thought about that too. Unfortunately I don't have the adaptor.

Was the existing (and potentially broken) install on a raid? If it wasn't, then you tell the bios to run in ide. You only need the raid driver if you're running raid, and it needs the driver in order to detect the hdd arrangement, to install an OS onto a partition.?

Alas no. This particular controller is not supported natively. Raid or no raid, if I don't install the driver, the system cannot access the HDD at all.

edit: also, you have ide drives, or sata drives? and have you looked at any jumper configurations?

SATA. Jumper set on SATA legacy.
P.S. It cannot possibly be any misconfiguration issue, because the setup worked perfectly fine for two years since I put it together.

[Gremlin]

Alas no. This particular controller is not supported natively. Raid or no raid, if I don't install the driver, the system cannot access the HDD at all.

no raid, to my knowledge is supported out of the box, not even onboard raid (which you said yours was)

because the setup worked perfectly fine for two years since I put it together.

thinking more in terms of data recovery, as you mentioned you wouldn't be able to get the data off it. If you can, you don't need to plug it in directly, but this sata mode is puzzling. If you're not running a raid, then you don't need the raid driver.

I'm thinking pop the old drive into a caddy interface, see if you can access the data. Try an install of the pc, on another drive, with bios set to IDE/whatever it calls it, no raid driver, etc.

What brand/model gear is all this?

[Street Gerbil]

no raid, to my knowledge is supported out of the box, not even onboard raid (which you said yours was)

thinking more in terms of data recovery, as you mentioned you wouldn't be able to get the data off it. If you can, you don't need to plug it in directly, but this sata mode is puzzling. If you're not running a raid, then you don't need the raid driver.

I'm thinking pop the old drive into a caddy interface, see if you can access the data. Try an install of the pc, on another drive, with bios set to IDE/whatever it calls it, no raid driver, etc.

What brand/model gear is all this?

That would be a good old ASUS SK8V. Not very impressive these days, but two years ago it used to be all the rage. I really don't feel like upgrading just yet, just because it still crunches everything I throw at it.
And yes, it routes all its HDD I/O via the dual mode onboard controller, which unfortunately is not supported natively (the one and only reason why my setup still has a 1.44" floppy).

[scracha]

Yep. No raid.
I thought about that too. Unfortunately I don't have the adaptor.

Alas no. This particular controller is not supported natively. Raid or no raid, if I don't install the driver, the system cannot access the HDD at all.

Is it just RAID 1 without any striping? If so I've used a Promise controller with SATA drives and the single drive was readable from a dell desktop straight from the BIOS without any probs

[Street Gerbil]

Ok, guys, thanks for helping me out. The saga is almost over. I've got myself a new 74Gb drive and everything is working fine now. I am still waiting to get the second one for the RAID setup. The mobo is perfectly fine. No core duo for me just yet.
Thanks for your advice, everybody!