I can't bloody think what it is. :(

Can't get my old athlon 750 to take a CD. It boots up fine into XP without nothing in the CD drive, once a CD is put in and it starts to spin up.... OFF, and it goes to the post screen. :(

Could it be a dodgy IDE ribbon or something more serious? Any suggestions? Its not the CD ROM drive as I've tried two with the exact same symptoms.

I can't bloody think what it is. :(

Can't get my old athlon 750 to take a CD. It boots up fine into XP without nothing in the CD drive' date=' once a CD is put in and it starts to spin up.... OFF, and it goes to the post screen. :(

Could it be a dodgy IDE ribbon or something more serious? Any suggestions? Its not the CD ROM drive as I've tried two with the exact same symptoms. [/quote']

could be a dodgy cd drive shorting out... or a failing power supply does it bluescreen first? or just reboot?

Straight to reboot - i.e it effectively turns off for a short time, just like when the restart button is hit. Tried 2 CD ROM drives so think I've ruled out a dodgy drive, and one of those ROMs was working fine not long ago.

Its recognised OK in my computer as D: its just once a CD enters it... Gone. :( :thumbdwn:

Any other thoughts, anyone? Google's info was limited, but the general advice seems to be to get a new CD drive - and I've tried two... :confused:

Can the IDE leads fail sometimes??

Any other thoughts' date=' anyone? Google's info was limited, but the general advice seems to be to get a new CD drive - and I've tried two... :confused:

Can the IDE leads fail sometimes??[/quote']

ide lead could fail but I dougbt it would short out

ide lead could fail but I dougbt it would short out

Hmmmm, maybe try one of the other power leads in it then - Will give that a shot - there's a couple of spare ones. This machine blew its last PSU - Hope I don't need another one already.

Jason

It does sound like a PSU problem -- almost like an overload protection, maybe worth checking all the leads for the CD - if you've been pulling them in and out you never know you could have caught one.

Hmmmm. Just got a whole lot worse. It now posts fine, but stops booting up when the dotted progress bar (on black screen) starts to go from left to right.... Usually takes about 4 seconds for that bar to move and it to go into XP pro screen. :grumpy: Now I can't get it past there - tried different IDE leads, removed CD drives, added drives.... Also tried different plug from the PSU in either CD drive.

Losing faith now. :thumbdwn:

Well, don'tknow if this helps. In the CD drive there are3 leads - some kind of small 4 plug sound thingy on the far end, then the IDE ribbon then the power.

Anyone think its worth me trying to boot from an XP Pro disk to see if its software related? XP doesn't even boot up now. :thumbdwn:

Ok, tried to boot from XP disk.... It just clicked, stopped, rebooted, clicked,stopped, rebooted.... on and on and on.... About once every 3 seconds,

Does anyone think the PSU has gone funny and its cutting out for some reason? There's nothing power absorbing on this system - old athlon 750, one HDD, one CD ROM. Well odd.

I know nothing.

My first thought was whether you had any software that seeks for D before C and doesn't like it, wanting D to be empty before booting C. (My Avast AV won't allow closedown if there's a disc in.)

That said, I can't think that's relevant if C was already booted.

Question now seems to be what you have done with your trial and error that's caused things to change, since C was booting to begin with?

Don't know why I'm posting this - please treat it as a bump

Best

Mo

You tried putting it on the same IDE channel as the HDD?

Steve

I would say its one of these things not in any kind of order.

1) knackered cdrom drive, (you have tried another I believe)

2) knackered ide cable, (you have tried another I believe)

3) knackered psu, a good possibilitly considering the first problem you had, but if all you have done is unplug the cdrom drive and now its not booting at all it might have deeper issues

4) knackered motherboard. It could just be the ide ports on the mobo giving you hassle. You could buy an ide card to stick in a pci slot and attach your drives to that, or if you know someone with one of these borrow it for a test.

I've not actually tried booting it up with no CD ROM attached at all - never thought of that. Will be a good diagnostic test that one.

I've not tried hooking the CD ROM to the HDD IDE port either - I assumed that was a no-no. Can I swap the two around? I bought the PSU 2nd hand, so wondering if it was dodgy before (i.e ran a system fine, but wouldn't play ball when the CD ROM requested some oomph)

Swap out the PSU

My money is on the PSU. Cause all kinds of weird problems if that's playing up. If you've got a multimeter check the voltages on the various outputs on the ATX header (with it plugged into the motherboard and turned on). You should see -12, -5, GND, +3.3, +5 and +12. If you see some weird ones, like 2.5V or something, it needs replacing. In the abscence of a multimeter, your BIOS might have a sensors display screen showing temperatures and the main voltages.

Your CD-ROM will draw more current when it's spinning up and that's probably pulling the voltages down too far, causing the PC to reset.

When you get a new PSU, don't get the el-cheapo one. It'll only go and break again in a few years (and possibly take the PC it's attached to with it!). Get a nice 300W+ unit (they all are these days) with Active PFC (that's less common). This is a good PSU for a reasonable price: http://www.scan.co.uk/Products/ProductInfo.asp?WebProductID=123527

Hope you get it sorted,

J

Can you try the CD drives in another machine?

If they work OK I agree, sounds like a PSU problem or motherboard assuming the IDE lead is OK.

If you can swap all the bits around, ie drives, PSU, etc you should be able to get to the faulty bit by elimination.

Well - The TWO CD drives I've used so far (one 32x ROM old, and one newer dvd-rom) both did the same thing, and I have used both historically a LOT - The DVD rom I knew was working fine in this system up until Xmas time.

Shall look into a new PSU - Not got another one for a tenner have you, Fluff?

Have you tried different settings/positions for the configuration plug, ie master/slave/cable select selection?

Have you tried different settings/positions for the configuration plug, ie master/slave/cable select selection?

Nope - I assumed that wouldn't make much difference? Both the CD and HDD are set to master due to them being the sole drives. No 2nd drive of each type fitted.

Ordered a new PSU from Ebuyer -

Gah! The power rating on a cheap PSU is about as reliable as the power rating on a Goodmans Hi-Fi sold by Argos. You'll probably get away with it this time, just keep everything backed up

Hope it fixes your problems!

J

Gah! The power rating on a cheap PSU is about as reliable as the power rating on a Goodmans Hi-Fi sold by Argos. You'll probably get away with it this time' date=' just keep everything backed up

Hope it fixes your problems!

J[/quote']

We'll see. At least this one is under guarentee. I read the comments and someone said they use them all the time with XP2200+ machines, so I figured it could handle a 750.

Right... :grumpy: Just fitted the new PSU and it still doing it. Sometimes it crashes halfway into startup, sometimes it even goes past the XP screen - but then it just dies and reboots before the desktop even comes up. :grumpy:

What's next to look at? Could I be looking at a serious motherboard problem now? And if so, anyone got one that will run an Athlon 750 CPU please?

Seems I can pick up new MOBOs for socket A athlon chips from Ebuyer for under £20. Wonder if thats worth it?

Have you re-installed XP? Your installation could be really messed up.

J

Never got the chance. It always rebooted once the CD drive span up. :(

Well, this time it managed to boot from the XP CD, which means the drive is now working with the new PSU - but the setup keeps failing at "error code 4 and error code 7" on two different discs.