| Post ID |
Timestamp |
Content |
User |
| 41360 |
2002-04-02 02:50:00 |
I've recently started to see an intermittent error on POST indicating that the system can't find my primary hard drive (a 40Gb Maxtor IDE on a P3 533 with 256 MB RAM). My BIOS offers F4 to ignore the drive, not much use as it's the boot drive, so usually I hit the reset button and it boots normally. Sometimes the ignore message pops up for a second then the HDD is found and the boot process continues normally, but mostly the system just works. I've also been experiencing (possibly unrelated) intermittent and so far unexplainable memory errors which started at about the same time. These errors result in unrecoverable blue screen system crashes. Is the cause likely to be the HDD or the motherboard, and how can I get a decent diagnosis? |
Guest (0) |
| 41361 |
2002-04-02 03:36:00 |
Have you checked the jumpers on the HDD?
JM |
Guest (0) |
| 41362 |
2002-04-02 06:29:00 |
Bios only waits a certain time for a HDD to be 'ready'. If the HDD is starting to fail (although 40G doesn't sound that old), bios could time out before the disk replys. This would explain why it works on a reset. Try enabling the power on memory test to give the disk a little more time to get going - if this works, I would backup your important files pronto; its giving you a warning! A flakey disk could produce memory like failures - the only way to prove is swap one or other out. |
Guest (0) |
| 1 |
|