Tom's Hardware > Forum > Motherboards & Memory > General Motherboard > K7N 420 Pro Crap Out?
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Rallaman   02-26-2002 at 03:46:42 AM

Just before Christmas I built 7 identical computers for me and my friends. The components are at the end of this post.

So 5 are running like gangbusters, no problems at all. These all run with Windows XP Pro. The other two both lost the ability to read the a: drive from Windows a few days ago. The a: drive can be accessed from DOS, but not windows. Windows does see the drive, but says it is inaccessible when access is attempted. One of these faulty computers is running XP pro, and the other is running Windows 2000.

I started working on the Windows 2000 machine, and first thing went to update all available software updates for windows. This didn't help. Then I loaded LiveDriver from the MSI site, and updated all the system drivers I could from here. This didn't help. So since I was running Award BIOS version 2.00, I decided as a last ditch effort to flash the BIOS. I upgraded the BIOS to 2.30 from the executable on the MSI website. I used a windows 98 startup disk to boot, then loaded the BIOS upgrade to the RAMDRIVE and ran it from there. I restarted the computer, Windows said it had detected a new component, I restarted and ran LiveDriver which told me I had the new BIOS installed and didn't need any upgrades. The a: drive still didn't work from Windows. I restarted again, and no change. So we played some TFC online for a while and shut off the computer. Today, the computer won't beep. There appears to be no power at all.

Any ideas?

How can I check to see if the power supply is working without hooking up to another motherboard? (this one has soft power)

Any ideas are appreciated!

Thanks, and here are my components....

Motherboard: MSI 6373-020 K7N420 PRO with nVIDIA nFORCE420D CHIPSET http://www.msi.com.tw/products/mai [...] el=MS-6373
Memory: Micron 256MB DDR PC2100 (Use 2 identical sticks in memory slots 1 & 3 to enable motherboards Twin Bank Architecture feature)
Hard Drive: Seagate Barracuda ATA IV 40GB (ST340016A)
http://www6.tomshardware.com/stora [...] ce-01.html
Fan: Noise Control Silverado http://www.plycon.com/silrado.htm
Case: ENERMAX / ANTEC, BLACK, 10-BAY, ENERMAX 330W PS, SERVER TOWER CASE ATX http://www.newegg.com/app/viewprod [...] 11-124-001
CDR: QPS 24x10x40 http://www.qps-inc.com/products/241040i.pdf
Floppy Drive: TEAC

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bront   02-26-2002 at 07:09:18 PM
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If they are identicle, try swaping a HD from one of the working ones to one of the non-working ones. If the floppy is still undreadable with the different HD, it's a hardware problem. If the HD from the non-working computer allows doesn't allow the floppy to be read, it's a software problem. If everything works fine, then leave them swapped and count your blessings.

As for the one that won't boot up, make sure the PSU didn't burn out. I had that happen once. I powered the computer off for a few days, came back and it wouldn't boot up, the PSU had died.

This is a non-smoking forum.
If your computer is smoking, please extinguish it immediately.

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Rallaman   03-04-2002 at 10:06:35 PM
- 0 +

I tested the power supply on the computer that won't turn on, and it is fine. I assume it is the Motherboard, but it seems strange that I would be able to boot three times, use the computer quite a bit, and then the BIOS flash would cause the board to crash. Does this sound plausible? Any ideas what happened?

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