# PC crashes and hangs 'detecting IDE drives'



## Morgoth (Jul 23, 2007)

After having endless, unresolved problems with my previous setup, due to a faulty motherboard, I bought a new motherboard, ram and a new AMD dual core processor. 

Everything went fine when I installed it, however, I am having intermittant problems (again!) with my new set up, much to my despair.

At the moment I'm still using the same installation of Windows, as the drivers and so on for the motherboard seemed to have worked ok and I was able to boot ok and use the PC in a perfectly normal way, at first. I installed AMD's "dual core optimizer" after noticing that the machine skipped when playing mp3s if something vaguely strenuous task was going on in the background, and some people suggested this might fix it. 

After installing this optimizer, the machine hung 'detecting IDE drives' for a long, long time. Then it booted up to the desktop, only to immediately reboot itself as soon as it reached the main screen. It repeated this several times, once hanging in the loading Windows XP bit instead. Eventually I turned the machine off and on again and it booted ok after that, and was ok, until this evening (worked fine all day yesterday). 

It makes noises occasionally, like it is powering down something inside, although there is no reduction in fan noise. It's a sort of clicking winding down noise like it makes when the PC is turned off. I left my PC running for a while and when I came back to it, it crashed when I tried to get to 'programs' in the start menu - unresponsive to clicking, frozen mouse pointer, etc..

On being turned on again, the PC could not get past 'detecting IDE drives' . I tried several times with the same results. After about 5 tries, I tried to get to the BIOS whilst it was doing this, and after exiting the BIOS, it booted up to Windows. 

Any suggestions? Is it likely that reinstalling windows would do any good, or is likely a hardware or BIOS issue?


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## Morgoth (Jul 23, 2007)

I forgot to mention - the problem with the dual core optimizer rebooting the machine repeatedly is actually something that has happened to a few people who have installed it, so I don't think it's necessarily connected to the same problem I'm having now. Unless the AMD dual core optimizer is causing the problem in the first place of course.


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## Guest (Sep 3, 2007)

Hi and welcome to TSF :grin:

It seems all problems are pointing in the direction of HD (Hard Drive) failure. Can you first tell me who is the manufacturer of your Hard Drive?


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## Morgoth (Jul 23, 2007)

Thanks for the response. 

My PC is back working just now, although nothing has changed. It has been detecting all three hard drives, and I also haven't had any of the the hard drives power down at all since then. It's been working without serious problems since my last post, but I doubt the problem is fixed in the long term. 

I notice that, when attempting to get into the BIOS, which takes a long time, even when the PC is booting normally, one of the drives, but not always the same one, is missing from the list of 'IDE' (in reality, SATA 2) drives in the BIOS. I also can't get it to 'auto-detect' the missing drive from the BIOS when this happens. 

I think hard drive failure would be too much of a coincidence to happen right now, as I just switched motherboard, processor, etc, and I never used to have any problem with my hard drives. 

I actually now have three hard drives, two of which - a 250gb boot drive and 320gb storage drive, were used with the old motherboard and processor, with a third 500gb one being brand new. They are all Western Digital SATA 2 drives.


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## dai (Jul 2, 2004)

when you change m/b's you need to do a repair install of windows


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## Morgoth (Jul 23, 2007)

I am considering reinstalling windows, with a clean install, but, since my PC is working (at least when it doesn't crash.. heh) I've been taking the time to try and back up the stuff on the System partition first. It's going to be time consuming reinstalling all my programs and drivers back, especially since in a lot of cases I'm not sure if I can find the discs I need. 

Anyway, I'm hoping that I have found out what the problem is. As yet I hadn't opened up the case to have a look because I was too busy using the PC. But one of the drives shut itself off again this evening, crashing the machine, so I took the opportunity to look inside for loose cables. At least I think it's the drive that shut down. It makes this winding down noise, like the noise when the PC turns off on shut down. 

When I opened the PC, I noticed that the SATA data cables on two of the drives were *very* loose and the one on the 320gb hard drive seemed to be hanging off. It seems that the Asus cables from my old motherboard are very loose and insecure, both at the motherboard end and the hard drive end, which is strange because I was already using these exact same cables on my old setup and they were secure enough to at least stay in place enough to work. But now on my new board they just seem to be falling out of place really easily. They don't feel like they're staying put properly, they can still wiggle around, even when I push them in. I'm thinking, and hoping, that these loose cables are what is causing the random crashes. Would a hard drive likely power down if it was not receiving any data from its cable? 

The biostar SATA cable that came with my new motherboard, that is being used for my boot drive seems to be very solid at both ends in comparison. Unfortunately, my new motherboard came with only two of these more secure SATA cables (very mean of them!), and I need three. 

I don't know if SATA cables actually have brands or anything, but can anyone recommend a cheap UK source of a secure SATA cable? Seems ridiculous that I have all these SATA cables from my old board, but they're just not secure enough for me to use on my new setup, for some reason.


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## dai (Jul 2, 2004)

sata cables do work loose at times and cause havok
http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/Black-10-SATA...ryZ74941QQssPageNameZWDVWQQrdZ1QQcmdZViewItem


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## Morgoth (Jul 23, 2007)

New SATA cables solved my problem, but only for a week. Today, it's depressingly back to hanging 'detecting IDE drives', making hard drive power down noises and then crashing. All of the SATA cables are completely secure now, as are the power cables. 

I tried unplugging my two dvd drives in case the hard drives weren't getting enough power now that a third drive has been added. I think it crashed already like that, however, though it remains to be seen if it will do better without them, long term. 

One other question, could there be something in the BIOS to detect hard drive temperature that would turn off a hard drive if it thought it was overheating? I have a WD2500KS drive that regularly reports itself as running at something like 50C, but I looked online and it would seem that it's a common problem for this drive to over-report its temperature.


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## Falconoffury (Sep 26, 2006)

Any chance that you can put the computer close to your ear with the case off and try to identify what device is making the power down sound? It sounds like the power supply is a likely candidate. It might also be a fan that stops spinning. I once had a power supply that made a barely audible, high-pitched whine whenever I simply plugged in the power cable. 

Please post full specs of the computer.


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## Morgoth (Jul 23, 2007)

Thanks for the response. I doubt I'd be able to hear what component was making the noise because the noise is over as soon as it starts and only happens occasionally. Still I may try running it with the case open. 

In the last hour it's actually been making the power down noise repeatedly but not crashing when it does it. I imagine its only a matter of time before it does crash again though. 

Its my impression that the noise comes from closer to the front of the PC where the hard drives are, not at the back where the PSU is. 

The PC has a brand new Biostar TF560 A2+ motherboard, an AMD x2 4400+, 1gb DDR2 ram, and three Western digital SATA 2 hard drives - 250gb, 320gb and 500gb (I use them for storing photographs). The 500gb is a new addition. The PSU is a little iffy brand wise - it came with my Asus case, but according to an online PSU requirements calculator, despite the extra hard drive, my machine ought not be consuming any more power than with my previous AMD 3200+ setup because of the greater power efficiency of AM2 processors. And it meets my needs even factoring in the brand not being great, and it always worked before with my old setup. Unfortunately I don't have a spare PSU of equivelent or greater wattage to try it with.


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## dai (Jul 2, 2004)

run 
chkdsk /r


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## aldistuck (Jul 20, 2007)

Ive had similar problems with IDE drives in the past causing the bios to do a long IDE Detection. This would occur when the mobo/bios did not like were I placed the jumper on the HDD. I have one system that wont read the HDD unless the jumper is on master which is fine because it is indeed my master drive. However I have another system that will hang at the IDE Detection screen if I have a jumper on the HDD. Bios reads the HDD but will not boot from it. When I remove the jumper everything zips right along.

I never did understand that.


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## seclorum (Jan 28, 2008)

Hello

I must say that i also do have a similar problem going on with my pc
Here are my current specs :

2 GB Ram
AMD Athlon 64bit 3500+
350W Powersupply
Radeon HIS X800xl 256mb
ABIT Fatal1ty AN8 S939

Here are my old specs from my previous system so that we can compare for later :

1500 GB Ram
AMD Athlon 54bit 3000+
350W Powersupply ( the same one im using on my new system )
Radeon 7600 series 256 shared
ASUS K8N S754
_____________________________________________________

As far as for what happend my asus mb died on me ( rest it's soul ) gave me alot of data and online time stressless and worked like a charm.
I then thought instead of only updating with a new MB ill update the whole thing ( Except for the tower, powersupply and HDD's ) since my old pc was about 3 years old and the newer games required a little more juice.
A friend of mine sold me his pc parts wich i know work just fine, he had them for 6 months and they all worked perfectly.

I replaced all the old parts with the new ones, and ofcourse " Error Loading OS system "
I googled it and i understood that winxp isnt the best operating system to work with when switching hardware specially MB's.
I plugged in my 3 hdd's as i had them set up in my previouse system
IDE1 had Master HDD + Slave DVDRom
IDE2 had Slave HDD + Cable select HDD
( IDE1 & IDE2 are the plugs on the motherboard )

The second setup is a little strange but it seemed to work. I booted up...blank screen, tried diffrent setups still blank screen. I googled the poblem and they all told me its a faulty hdd...i refused to give up. I tried one last setup wich was
IDE1 Master HDD
IDE2 Slave DVDRom ( i unplugged my other 2 hdd's )
Worked like a charm, so i went on installing winxp sp2, then installed all the drivers needed ( my motherboard driver came with a cpu driver wich i let beeing installed ) installed video driver last ofcourse.
All systems set right ?
YES 
So i shut down my pc and plugged in my other 2 hdd's with my old setup further up and it worked, bios recognised them with no effort and booted up normally so i went on updating all those winxp updates, i was enjoying my new system for about 2 weeks when my pc striked....BAD.

It would simply shutdown, and not the Start->Turn Off->Shut down way no, but lets say im waching a movie / playing a game or simply surfing the net...ill try do describe this as detailed as i can : Imagine that your pc is turned on and you press AND hold the OFF SWICH for 5 second...
No shutdown procedure simply you see your desktop then the pc shutsdown, that sort of noise. I had to turn off the main power then back on again to get the pc working but still at BIOS it stands still when trying to detect my hdd's. I unplugged my 2 hdd's and set up one hdd on IDE1 and the dvdrom on IDE2 and reset the BIOS ( Y) booted up fine.
I can manage to plug in one hdd now on the IDE2 with the DVDRom
i think the hdd is on cable select where the dvdrom is slave if im not mistaken.
Anyway this became very frustrating as i kept loosing my work specially open explorers and usefull links like just now....thank goodness for FIREFOX 
after a restart i start firefox and my work gets restored pluss all my writing like this....anyways
This kept happening at least once a day, i have heard a faulty hdd before and for that i keep my tower open all the time to keep an ear open for any new sounds like fan stopping etc.
But the only thing i hear is the shutdown sound as i described earlier, and everytime it does that i MUST clear the BIOS before i can boot up again...and everytime winxp is loading it take a long time, normal time is arround 30 to 60 sec
this one takes over 2 minutes.
And i cant afford to restart manually, becouse everytime i reach the bios it stall and i get the blank screen....My dvdrom light is lid also the hdd light, my monitor isnt getting any signal so its off...so as mentioned my only way is to turn off the mainpower from the back, reset bios then load up normally ( with a long loading time for winxp )

I think i described this as close as possible
Hope there is anyone out there than can help me
Thanks


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## dai (Jul 2, 2004)

when you upgrade the last thing you leave out is the power supply
pcie requires a min output of 26amps on the 12v+ line and a quality brand supply
http://www.techsupportforum.com/f210/power-supply-information-and-selection-192217.html


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## seclorum (Jan 28, 2008)

i must admit i was a little worried about it but when it booted i thought it was more than enought...
But what about when it stalls on BIOS ? You think a new powersuply might solve this?

Also what W should i go for, i mean i did read the link you gave me but should i go for a 400W or 450W
thanks for a fast reply


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## dai (Jul 2, 2004)

i would not go below these prefer the 1st one
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16817139004
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16817256037


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## seclorum (Jan 28, 2008)

what about my long loading time when loading up winxp ?
and the bios stall ? any idea ? i mean could this all be power related becouse pcie is sucking up most of the juice


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## dai (Jul 2, 2004)

is fast boot enabled in the bios


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## seclorum (Jan 28, 2008)

how do i check that ?


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## dai (Jul 2, 2004)

on my m/board bios it is on the boot menu called quick boot 
the wording may differ from manufacturer to manufacturer


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## seclorum (Jan 28, 2008)

now my computer has been on for 3 days straight and no shutdown....strange, the last thing that i did diffrent was entering the bios....and re-detecting my hdd's even tho bios had them correctly listed on main bios screen. All im doing now also is turning off the monitor when i leave the pc, im keeping the pc on now to see if this problem occurs again
Might be my monitor ? that somehow shortcuts ?


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## seclorum (Jan 28, 2008)

ps: my monitor has its own power cable plugged into the wall


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