Serious Motherboard Trouble. Please help!

the_syco

On Thursday evening, Windows starting acting odd. The mouse was freezing, stuff wouldn't work, etc. So I restarted the machine, not really thinking much about it. Upon restart, the problem continued. Also, files started to disappear. My music directory listed only an eigth of the full size, and albums were missing. I could see only albums begining with "A", but if I used the run command, I could connect to albums beginning with "H". Quite odd. Also, I could hear something clicking. Not clicking much, but a slow click was heard every so often. Fearing the Click of Death, and as it was late, I was tired, so I left it until this evening (Friday).

Now, though, Windows fails. Not a case of "no os found", but a case of nothing there. In BIOS, it listed three out of four drives. I tried removing one by one, and also using one at a time, on each of the 4 SATA ports, but no luck. Nothing is seen. Have an IDE DVD-ROM drive, which runs ok, but it's on an IDE connection.

Now, it see's none of the SATA drives. I think it may be the motherboard + one drive, but I can't be sure. Anyone have any ideas?

Specs in the sig, mobo is a "Epox 9npa+ sli" (AMD). Have had it for about 31 or 32 months old at this stage.

=-=

If anyone knows where I could get a motherboard on Saturday which would take a socket 939 CPU, PC3200, a PCI-E graphics card, and maybe some PCI cards, I'd be most pleased.

Somehow, I still hope to make it to the 24hour WCG LAN.

Shiny

Was it the drive with your OS on it that was clicking ?

I too fear the click of death.

If your music was on a different drive than the OS then that
doesn't explain why stuff was going missing....

uberpixie

Hey,

Jonnie has spare SATA controllers here in the gaff if you think the sata controller is dead.

I would advise seeing if the pc will boot with a linux live CD. If you have a major hardware fault, the linux disk should pick it up.

The linux disk will also be able to tell you what data is still on your hard drives.

the_syco

Shiny wrote: »

Was it the drive with your OS on it that was clicking ?

I've no idea. I hope so. That's the thing. I've no idea which drive the OS is on (It's been reinstalled several times). When I was trying to sort out the drives, nothing has been clicking since. The machine is next to me now, with the side open, and no clicking is to be heard, so no idea. When it was, it was more like a clunk noise, every few so often, seperated by about 30 seconds or more. With the case being so insulated that I can barely hear any of it's 4 fans, me hearing the clunking was seen as bad by me.

uberpixie wrote: »

I would advise seeing if the pc will boot with a linux live CD. If you have a major hardware fault, the linux disk should pick it up.

It boots up knoppix. I think it see's two drives, but they don't seem to be mountable Long time since I've use knoppix, so maybe doing the wrong thing. Went into /dev/ and found a /mnt/ dir and right clicked a few things. But as BIOS doesn't see naught, I don't have much hope that the drives will work.

uberpixie wrote: »

The linux disk will also be able to tell you what data is still on your hard drives.

That's just it. Knoppix doesn't see the HDD's. Hell, BIOS doesn't even see them

On the plus side, I goto NY later this month, so I think I'll hold off till then to get the mobo, and may go and get a brand new setup (new mobo, cpu, ram, and card). Meh.

the_syco

uberpixie wrote: »

If you have a major hardware fault, the linux disk should pick it up.

Any idea how I could check into this?

Also, forgot to say: Floppy drive thing stopped working a few months ago, and the network card went two weeks ago. Seems the mobo is slowly dying Dunno what will go next