re-booting problem

trevor-speaktrevor-speak
edited February 2007 in Hardware
can anyone help I am trying to resolve a problem for a friend of mine he purchased a second hand motherboard complete with cpu from bowlers computer fair, together with a new tower case. When he brought the machine to me i noticed that the power supply was incorrect for the cpu i.e no ATX 12v connector for the p4 cpu, changed to a correct PSU which is 500 watt, set everything up for him in bios so that it would boot from the CD & left him to it, he has since brought his pc back saying he cannot install Windows XP, i have tried various options but everytime I press any key to boot from cd the damm machine just keeps rebooting. I have identified that the motherboard is from an emachine 420, the bios recognises a P4 2.0 GHZ cpu, all case & cpu fans are working ok so have ruled out temperature problems, & i have tried various memory but to no avail, i have also tried to run diagnostic software from a bootable cd which loads the menu screen ok but when you select any of the options it reboots. Can anyone out there help?

Comments

  • LeonardoLeonardo Wake up and smell the glaciers Eagle River, Alaska Icrontian
    edited February 2007
    Does it detect the CD drive in the BIOS?
  • trevor-speaktrevor-speak
    edited February 2007
    yes detects both the hard drive as primary master & cd drive as secondary master
  • LeonardoLeonardo Wake up and smell the glaciers Eagle River, Alaska Icrontian
    edited February 2007
    i have tried various memory but to no avail
    Hardware troubleshooting (if not already performed):

    1) try different IDE cable to the CD drive

    2) try a different CD/DVD drive

    I've had the same problems before with CD drives that appeared to be in good working order. An IDE cable swap or CD drive swap fixed it. CD drives can go bad and not be immediately apparent.
  • profdlpprofdlp The Holy City Of Westlake, Ohio
    edited February 2007
    Set the cdrom/DVD drive you're using as the Master drive on the channel it is on, preferably a different channel than the one the HD is on.
  • trevor-speaktrevor-speak
    edited February 2007
    ok guys heres what i have tried changed cables, changed cd/dvd drives tried 3 so far, changed hard drives, heres an interesting anomoly i have changed the 500 watt PSU for a 430 watt and it dosen't get to the "press any key to boot from cd drive" it dosen't seem to want to read the cd or dvd drive despite the bios recognising them, everything is down to the bare minimum i cannot believe that it requires a PSU over 500watt, I have a P4 3.2 gig, with 256meg video card, 2 SATA, 2 IDE, CD writer & dvd rewriter running happily on a 430 watt PSU, it has to be the motherboard that's causing the problem after all my mate did buy it second hand from a computer fair & he is a complete novice so he wouldn't know what sort of questions to ask, and we all know that what you see is not always what you get when you buy a second hand motherboard that has been stripped out of a PC, you can only take the sellers word which is usually "oh its come out of a working PC" wev'e all heard that one before and stayed well clear. I think i have a 600 watt PSU in 1 of my other PC's may try that will let u know the outcome.

    Cheers
  • trevor-speaktrevor-speak
    edited February 2007
    I have tried 4 different PSU's - 300, 430,500 & 600 Watt, here's an anomoly i get to the "press any key to boot from cd drive" using the 300 & 500 then the reboot everytime I press a key, but it dosent seem to get to read the cd using the 430 & 600, if anyone can explain the problem i would be gratefull
  • LeonardoLeonardo Wake up and smell the glaciers Eagle River, Alaska Icrontian
    edited February 2007
    I have tried 4 different PSU's
    I think we've ruled out power problems, at least PSU output. Have you tried with a different CD/DVD drive? I've had the same problem before installing Windows, until I swapped out the CD drive, which I thought at the time was good.
  • Straight_ManStraight_Man Geeky, in my own way Naples, FL Icrontian
    edited February 2007
    trevor.speak wrote:
    I have tried 4 different PSU's - 300, 430,500 & 600 Watt, here's an anomoly i get to the "press any key to boot from cd drive" using the 300 & 500 then the reboot everytime I press a key, but it dosent seem to get to read the cd using the 430 & 600, if anyone can explain the problem i would be gratefull

    Try swapping out keyboards also, please. Corroded old keyboards can get stuck to active even when not being typed with. Some bioses can be set never to stop booting even on error. another way to do this, is to tell the bIOS to stop boot on any error, then it will try to tell what the error is.
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