New to the forum, so please forgive me if this is in the wrong section and also if this is a long post. I want to give you all the info possible so you can help because this is REALLY frustrating me.
I recently upgraded my machine significantly from original and am now getting a timeout error. My system specs:
ASUS A7N8X-VM
AMD Athlon 2800+
nVIDIA GeFORCEn2
Built-in to Motherboard: Ethernet, video, and audio
2x 80 GB Hard Drives, one for application and one for data storage
512 MB RAM
My upgrades were as follows:
2 1GB sticks of RAM (same make/model) for dual channel - I removed the original 512MB
nVIDIA GeForce 6800 GT video card (AGP)
I made these upgrades about a month ago and had no problems after all the drivers were installed and my machine was really cooking! But within the last week, after a reformat of my application hard drive (routine cleanup - I do it once every 18 months or so), my computer started freezing.
It freezes for about 15-20 seconds and then reverts back to normal and functions. But it freezes like this every 15 minutes or so, whether I am running an application or not. I went to the system logs and found the following error:
"ID: 9, ATAPI, device/IDE/IdePort 1 did not respond within the timeout period." Now, I did some research and found this most likely to be a bad HD. So, I ran "dskchk c:" in DOS and when it was finished my machine rebooted and I couldn't even get to BIOS. I assumed the HD went. So, I replaced it. And now, while I was able to reformat the new drive and get to my desktop, it is freezing again with the same error as stated above.
Now I need to know what is actually wrong, whether my original HD is actually crashed or workable, and how to fix this. Is it a cable? The motherboard? The BIOS?
Does anybody have any answers or thoughts? If you need more info, just ask and ye shall receive.
It could be a number of things, all of them hardware related. Since it has happened on more than one HD it could be the MB controller going out or a power issue (things that are common to the drives). You should check the drives by get the diagnostic test software from the HD manufacturer and running that, checking the HD temps, and by reading the S.M.A.R.T. data from the HDs. Running "dskchk c:" mainly checks the file structures and is not a hardware diagnostic. I suspect the first disk is not really bad and it is a MB or PSU issue.
hmm as much as these diag tools are great, they can indicate a faulty harddrive when infact it is a fualty controller. I had a similar issue when i had an asus pk5-premium Wi-Fi AP, they were known for being very picky with which harddrives you could use. Because this has only recently started doing this, It would suggest that the mobo could have developed a fault. does it have SATA? try a SATA drive in there. because youve had 2 drives, it would be unlinkely although not unheard of, for both to be faulty.
What's the best way to test for a motherboard issue? Will the diagnostic toold pick that up? I don't want to invest in something that won't help diagnose the true problem.....
