Problem fixing this pc

Ok, i successfully installed the new motherboard and the old hardware in my pc. There was a problem with the processor though, when i took it out of the package i noticed 3 pins on the corner were bent over. I thought it was done for, but dad said that it's worth a shot of bending them back and seeing if it will work before sending it back. So we straightened them (about 20 minutes of tedious work with a pocket knife :)) and it seemed to work. It went through the bios just fine, everything seemed to run ok. But, when we try to load windows, it just reboots. I attempted to run safe mode to see what happens, and it does load several files into memory before rebooting, so im confused as to whether the processor is the problem or not. There may be minor damage and that could be the problem so that when it gets warmed up loading those things it reboots (or perhaps that's at the point where windows switches over from real to protected mode during boot (winxp)). Either way, there's one other thing that was nagging me. I'm not sure how window's handles missing hardware devices, as far as i know it should just load and $$$$$ about them not being there, but perhaps not. See, with this new motherboard, im not sure how i need to hook in the cdrw and dvd drives, the board itself has a built in slot of cd...but im not sure if that's just what i want as the master drive, or if it means the cdrw. Anywho neither of them are plugged into the board and that made me think perhaps windows was the problem. any ideas?

About the pins, if your BIOS is running fine, and it gets as far as loading windows, then it's probably a hardware conflict of some kind. It is a possibility that it was a bad install of windows, or that you ESD'd one of your devices (in which case it requires removal of each device until the defective one is found). I'm not quite sure what you mean by a built-in CDROM slot. Just put your CDROM's onto your secondary IDE Controller or something. Otherwise, to try to solve restarting issues, check:

-IRQ and DMA
-RAM
-Bad HDD sectors
-MB Jumper Settings
-Attached Peripherals

U probably know more about hardware then me, but when I upgraded the motherboard and processor on my old machine I forgot to upgrade the POWER UNIT -- it was underpowered for the new system specs and responded similarly to what u described...

did u upgrade the power supply???

Yeah, I've bent CPU pins more times than I'd like to say :o

P4 pins are so delicate, just taking them out of the package can bend a bunch if you aren't carefull. But i've never had a problem with just bending them back.


Your post is kinda a long, confusing paragraph, so I'm going to assume you haven't re-installed windows. When you upgrade a piece of hardware as important as a motherboard, it is really very wise to format/reinstall Windows and all drivers. When you put in new hardware, all the old drivers are still installed. Even though it will recognize the new hardware and probably allow the installation of the proper drivers, the old ones will almost always cause a conflict somewhere.

I am nearly 100% certain this will fix your problem.

I think that osr might have hit it right. I didn't upgrade the power supply because when i read the specs off to my dad he said it'd work fine (even though it says amd recommended right on it). And i remember noticing that hte first time i powered it up, i could hear the fans whir up then down, and hte led's on the keyboard brighten and dim...so maybe it is a lack of power.
Do you all think that it would restart due to a lack of power when the hdd's start to spin up?

>>cdrom slot
yeah, i was tired when i wrote that. I can't think of the name off the top of my head, but basically as you know there's 2 cables connecting to a cdrom device. the power and the wire that sends data. The one that sends data has a dedicated plug on the board (unlike the last board i had). So I'm confused on whether the cdrom device should be plugged into that slot, or the dvdrom, right now the dvd is configured as the master.

And as far as hardware conflicts goes i haven't gotten rid of anything but the old motherboard, so it shouldn't affect windows. The only thing that could mess with it is not having the cd and dvd hooked up correctly. Beyond that windows is fine.

Quote:

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Originally posted by Waldo2k2
And as far as hardware conflicts goes i haven't gotten rid of anything but the old motherboard, so it shouldn't affect windows. The only thing that could mess with it is not having the cd and dvd hooked up correctly. Beyond that windows is fine.

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Dude, I'm telling you that replacing a motherboard and just letting Windows handle it is going to cause more problems than fix it. Every driver for every aspect of that new board is loaded up, and there's a lot of drivers for a motherboard. You now have drivers for your old AND your new board in Windows, whether you see them or not, and it causes problems.


But going off of the power supply theory, how big is your PSU? If it's 250 or bigger you really shouldn't be having problems, unless you a ton of stuff being powered in your PC. I ran a computer with 2 HDDs, 2 CD-ROMS, floppy, 4 fans, Athlon 2200+, and a bunch of other stuff off of a 185 Watt Gateway PSU with no problems at all. I now have an Antec 300 Watt (and a new case) but if that wimpy little 185 Watt PSU could power it all, it doesn't take a whole lot. Obviously if you can get your hands on a new PSU for free try it out. You don't want to spend money on something that may not fix it.

well there's more to a psu than volts...

but windows wouldn't just restart the computer, in fact windows doesn't load completely, i think that the spinning up of the hdd might be too much...hell the psu might be damaged from the lightning too. There's just more i have to check, but im not going to chalk it up to windows right away. Eventually if it comes down to it i'll go back into the recovery console (which does work by the way) and try to copy a few files that i need to my second hdd. Then i'll reinstall windows.

Maybe you can borrow a friend's PSU or something? Or I'm assuming you may have another computer, since you're still posting on these forums :p

And yes, there is more than volts, I'm well aware of that. You could check to make sure each rail is putting out the correct amount, which is easy enough to do.

Good luck though ;) It's a pain in the butt to go through all this stuff, but I guess if you're increadibly lucky you can do it without losing any data.