bad motherboard or bad HDD?

[theholylancer]

hi, after my upgrade i decided to try and get my old PIII system up for my mom as a email browser. Its specs are:

PIII 550E @ 733 MHZ
SOYO SY-6VBA 133
diamond Savage 4
700 some odd mb of ram
a 7-9 yr old 8gb quantium fireball HDD
and a IBM cd rom


now i'm missing a floppy drive , but i don't know if that is why the system says I/O error after the hardware detecting stage...

in the hardware detecting stage (where if ya press del it goes into bios) it says that primary master hard drive fail and th floppy is missing. i press F1 to bypass it
then when it gets to the report page it says that I/O error and that tells me to replace a disc.

So i tried to boot from the cd (windows 2000), but it still says I/O error....

What is going on?

BTW i think i had the same problem when i took out the 20gb to place it into my new gig when i though that my new seagate was bad....



AMD A64 3200+Venice
DFI Lanparty UT NF4 Ultra-D
OCZ 2x512mb EL Gold VX PC3200 ram 3-3-3-8
evga eGeforce 6800GT 256mb GDDR3 ram
Enermax 485W PSU
Bios 3/10
WIndows XP SP2
No OC

 

[Coyote]

First double check the cabling on the HDD.

Might wanna run a drive fitness proggie (from the HDD's manufacturer).

Does the BIOS have a "stop on errors" section?. If so, set it to "none"

Mobile XP 2600+ (11X215)
Abit NF7-S v 2.0
Maxtor 60GB ATA 133 7200RPM
1 gig Corsair XMS PC3200
eVGA 6800GT
Enermax Noisetaker 420 watts
Win2K sp4

 

[theholylancer]

i changed the IDE cable to a known good onw, i can't even get to the boot up screen, even if i set the boot order to cd first i can't get into the cd at all... just some i/o error....

AMD A64 3200+Venice
DFI Lanparty UT NF4 Ultra-D
OCZ 2x512mb EL Gold VX PC3200 ram 3-3-3-8
evga eGeforce 6800GT 256mb GDDR3 ram
Enermax 485W PSU
Bios 3/10
WIndows XP SP2
No OC

 

[Rugger]

Have another HDD to try in the system?

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<font color=red>You're a boil on the arse of progress - don't make me squeeze you!</font color=red>

 

[schuy1]

Simplest resolution, download DFT using another rig, burn the iso, and insert it prior to OS boot. Follow the prompt, use advanced test and it will let you know if the HDD is good or bad. (some maxtor/seagates dont like DFT drive fitness test, so check out seagate diagnostics too)

 

[endyen]

You may have the ide cable installed wrong way round. Make sure the stripe is at pin1 on the mobo, and closest to the power connection, at the other end. Also make sure you have the right end plugged into the mobo. The two connectors closest together, are for drives.