Computer auto-restarts during startup, forever

[drmsucks]

So I guess that's it! Dead drive, needs replacing. Presumably I'll need to replace with an identical (but not broken!) Hitachi Deskstar?

No - you don't need an Hitachi drive; any 3.5" SATA drive will do - your choice, look here for an idea: http://www.newegg.com/Product/ProductList.aspx?Submit=ENE&N=2010150014+50001306+1035915133&name=SATA+3.0Gb%2fs. I like Western Digital but get a 7200  rpm drive with a 16 MB cache. I said SATA because of the model number you gave for the Hitachi. I assume that your drive has a data cable ≈.5 inch wide.

Set the BIOS to boot from the CD first (once you have replaced the hdd), boot from your XP disk and it should be mostly automatic - certainly self-explanatory.

My personal opinion - don't get Vista now; you'll need at least 1 GB more of RAM and you didn't mention your video card or on board video specs but, most likely, you'll need a new video card - both upgrades will be necessary for a (mostly) satisfactory experience with Vista. And that begs the question of how well your processor will run Vista. Guaranteed, however,  that everything will run slower under Vista. I'd save Vista for your next computer.

Let us know how you make out and if you have any questions, post back.

EDIT: One final pre-step: follow safety precautions above when going inside the case; if the psu has another SATA power lead, replace the lead on the drive with a new power lead. Try to boot.

EDIT2: Your motherboard will only support SATA I drives and most of the drives for sale are SATA II. Usually there is a hard drive jumper position to allow SATA II drives to work on a SATA I motherboard; but there are a few motherboard chipsets that will not work with SATA II drives even when propely jumpered. Short version - if you select a SATA II drive, check with the mfg to be sure that it will work with your motherboard.

[ArtSiren]

Thanks again drmsucks! I'll have a rummage around for a nice HDD then. Probably a 250GB one, since the last one was 160MB.

I did forget to mention my graphics card is a Radeon 9600SE I think. And I don't doubt for a minute that Vista will slow everything down - so as you suggest, I'll stick with XP. I bought a laptop that had Vista installed but only 0.5GB of RAM! You can imagine how slow that was until I put another 2GB RAM into it - and a Celeron, so not the fastest processor either.

I didn't quite understand the bit about the SATA power lead and PSU. All the cables go straight into the PSU case - ie they aren't plugged into it via a plug and socket. The power cable from the PSU to the HDD is actually 5 wires (2 black, 1 red, 1 orange, 1 yellow), and I think there is a connector half way down and a connector on the end (rather like ribbon cables - primary and secondary?) It's a bit difficult to work it all out as all the power wires are cable-tied together. Did you mean to try plugging in the other connector on the same power cable? Or were you referring to the connection between HDD and motherboard?

[drmsucks]

Didn't mean to confuse you about the power lead. Older SATA drives, like yours, quite often had two connections for power (because older psu's did not have SATA power connectors), a molex connection (like you have) and the new SATA power connection. Regardless, the object is to eliminate a bad power lead as a source of the problem. Swap power leads to the drive with any other compatabile lead that reaches. See if the computer will boot.

You may need a power connector adapter with the new drive if it only has an input for a SATA power connector. (See attachment) A word of caution, only ONE power lead should be connected to power the drive regardless of how many power inputs there are.

If you haven't already done so, check this link (once your system is back up) to see how Vista might fare on your system. http://www.microsoft.com/windows/windows-vista/get/upgrade-advisor.aspx

Please post back if you have any questions and to let us know how you make out.

[recovering disk space -- attachment deleted by admin]

[ArtSiren]

Thanks drmsucks. I'm strictly a 'software' person. If anything goes wrong with hardware I'm very easily confused.

I've checked the psu connectors and the power to hard drive is via a black plug (with COMAX punched on it, and the 5 wires I mentioned previously) - directly from the psu. Is this the SATA 1 connector, and so I'll need the 4-wire (white transparent) connector to SATA 2?

Also, from one of your previous posts, is the motherboard model normally printed anywhere on the actual board? I know it's a Soltek board that I bought in 2005. I've already removed the hard drive. Can I get the motherboard model from the BIOS somewhere, and would I need to reconnect the hard drive again? As you said, it looks like it'll be fairly difficult finding a suitable SATA 1 HDD, so if I get a SATA 2, I'll need to make sure it's compatible with my chipset. Thanks.

[drmsucks]

I've checked the psu connectors and the power to hard drive is via a black plug (with COMAX punched on it, and the 5 wires I mentioned previously) - directly from the psu.

A SATA power connector looks like this:

and so I'll need the 4-wire (white transparent) connector to SATA 2?

No - the "white transparent" 4 wire connector is an 'old style' connector. I'm not sure at this point (but you will be after looking at the picture above) what type connector you have from the psu. But, what ever you have, it is readily adaptable to the right connector.

Re the motherboard ID - I'm not familiar with Soltek boards but I suspect that the model # is on the top side of the board. If you can't find it, download and run Belarc Adviser: http://www.belarc.com/free_download.html. It should tell you what mb you have. These are the chipsets to watch out for (from Wikipedia): Chipsets known to have this fault include the VIA VT8237 and VT8237R south bridges, and the VIA VT6420 and VT6421L standalone SATA controllers.[4] SiS's 760 and 964 chipsets also initially exhibited this problem, though it can be rectified with an updated SATA controller ROM.

Just noticed that you had pulled the hard drive Forget Belarc, the model number should be on the mb, usually on the periphery some where. If you have to use a software approach, you'll have to hook the hdd back up, of course. No need to fully secure it - but, there may be a slight torque when the drive first spins up.

[ArtSiren]

Many thanks once again drmsucks! 

My connector is the same as your photo, so that should be fine to just plug in and go if I buy a SATA2 hard drive.

I rummaged around looking for pictures of Soltek motherboards and found the one I've got. It is a Soltek SL-K8AV2-RL. I assume different models have components in different positions (?). I matched my motherboard to the pic I found, socket for socket, chip for chip, and capacitor for capacitor, so I think I've found the correct one. Apparently it was released in 2004, which also fits in with me getting hold of one in 2005.

If so, the chipset is VIA Apollo K8T800, so I guess this will be fine for a SATA2 HDD. 

[ArtSiren]

D'oh! I'm wrong. Just found another website with a review of my mainboard. It's got VT8237 Southbridge, which is incompatible.

For your info: http://www.hardwarezone.com/articles/view.php?id=921&cid=6&pg=32

I just checked out the Wikipedia page on SATA2 (SATA 3.0Gb) and so I might opt for a Maxtor drive that offers a solution to the dodgy chipset issue.

[drmsucks]

Wonderful detective work, artsiren Glad now that I mentioned the potential incompatibility (I almost didn't!); easier to take a couple extra days now instead of a week later on trying to figure out why your new hard drive didn't work!

Looks like the Maxtor solution is perfect! Btw, you'll lose no hard drive data transfer speed whatsoever by staying at the 1.5 Gbps instead of the 3.0 Gbps - the 1.5 Gbps is seldom reached by today's drives (and the 3.0 Gbps is never reached), and then only in certain "burst' situations, mostly coming from the drive's cache.

Please keep us posted and let us know when you are back in business!

[ArtSiren]

Okay, I've finally taken delivery of my new HDD:

Maxtor 500GB DiamondMax22 SATA2 7200rpm, 32MB cache

I guess I'll still need a little help as this is the first time I've ever installed a new hard drive and tried to install an OS. I'm using XP Home edition.

So far, I have:

Installed the drive, and connected power and data cables.
Gone into BIOS - it still doesn't recognise the existance of a hard drive (I assumed I'd have to do something first, before it gets recognised).
Restarted the computer and tried to boot from CD drive.
It loads files in Setup page.
Then I try to setup XP and it all stops with an error (to protect my computer).
The error message is:
   STOP 0x0000008E (0xC0000005, 0x8081A799, 0xF739A778, 0x00000000)

I tried again, and got told there was no BIOS, so I restarted and went into BIOS (so it is there!). I then restarted again trying to boot from CD, and stopped at the same point, trying to setup XP with the STOP code shown above.

If there is something I'm stupidly doing wrong, I hope somebody can help. But I'm going to search for some more details about the HDD - I'm pretty sure the jumper is in the right place, but I'll check again.

[ArtSiren]

Oops, I forgot to say in my last post that the 4 numbers in brackets after the stop message changed between the 1st and 3rd attempts, and that there was a message underneath:

setupdd.sys - Address F77C0CAD base at F7794000 Datestamp 41107c8f


Maybe it's an issue with drivers? And would I have to somehow format the drive first, before attempting to put XP onto it?

[ArtSiren]

OK, here are some other things I've tried.

I checked the jumper setting on the drive - the default is SATA 1.5 Gb/s so that should be fine with my motherboard.

Maxtor's website says that no drivers are necessary (and they don't have any to download on their site) because their drives are designed to use the generic drivers.

Whenever I shutdown and try to start again I get two outcomes which alternate: the computer either starts normally, with a beep, checks memory, and tries to boot from the XP CD; or it doesn't beep and gives the following:

   'VIA Technologies, Inc. VIA VT8237 Serial ATA RAID BIOS Setting Utility V2.10

   Scan devices, Please Wait...
   Press <Tab> Key into User Window!

   Hardware Initiate Failed, Please Check Device!!!
   The BIOS does not be installed. Press <g> to continue!'


I also delved around the internet, and found that it is quite common for SATA hard drives to not show up in the BIOS or to show up as SCSI devices. In fact my new drive, like the old one, doesn't show up in BIOS, but does show up with its 'STM' reference number when starting up (before the boot from CD screen).

I found that, among other things, the 'STOP 0x0000008E' error can involve problems with other hardware, and so this might never have been a hard drive problem - that doesn't matter, as I've got a shiny new HDD now! 

But might this be a problem with my RAM dying somehow? I've got two 512MB DDR400 PC3200 sticks. I have tried using each stick in each slot, but with no luck. So is it usual for ALL the RAM to get corrupted if something goes wrong? I read on another site that if the memory fails, it can completely ruin the hard drive.

I think that's it so far, and I'm running out of ideas. I'm not sure if I need to change anything in the BIOS settings - I think I posted them earlier in this thread. Maybe I need to just buy some new RAM(?)

I don't think it's a PSU problem, as on the alternate times that the computer starts up ok, I can see the presence of everything incl. the HDD, and can get through to Windows Setup all the way to the XP setup - I guess I'm supposed to press <Enter> rather than <R> for Recovery Console?

Anyway, lots of info to digest here. Heeeeelp!

[ArtSiren]

Looks like it isn't just me who's stumped on this one. 

One of my friends says the motherboard is three years old, so I need a new computer! That seems a fairly expensive way to solve the problem. 

Okay, more info. I thought I should post the actual STOP message I get and ask for some BIOS advice.

It's the usual stuff about 'shut down windows to prevent damage' and 'if this is the first time, restart your computer' etc. The important stuff:

   'Check to be sure you have adequate disk space. If a driver is identified in the Stop message, disable the driver or check with the manufacturer for driver updates. Try changing video adapters.

   'Check with your hardware vendor for any BIOS updates. Disable BIOS memory options such as caching or shadowing. If you need to use Safe Mode to remove or disable components, restart your computer, press F8 to select Advanced Startup Options, and then select Safe Mode.'

I posted the STOP error number above. I also posted the BIOS info very early in this thread when trying to figure out why my computer restarted over and over. And have put in bold the bit I'm interested in.

The bits I need advice on are these, from Advanced BIOS Features:

CPU Internal Cache [Enabled]
External Cache [Enabled]
CPU L2 Cache ECC Checking [Enabled]
.
.
.
Video BIOS Shadow [Enabled]

Obviously, there is a lot of other stuff, but should I disable all these cache and shadow options, as it instructs in the Stop message? I don't know what they do, and whether it is actually critical that they are enabled!

Thanks in advance for any help on this.

[drmsucks]

Artsiren - Sorry not to have replied; I was gone for awhile and just now noticed that you are still struggling.

You've covered a lot of ground but let's start here: remove and replace the motherboard battery - the battery probably is a CR2032 but replace in kind (unplug the computer from the wall and follow proper ESD procedures); reset the BIOS to "BIOS defaults" - "safe" defaults, or similar (we'll reset these to "optimized" later); you made reference to an error message regarding RAID - go through the BIOS settings and make sure that RAID options are NOT "on"; if your new hard drive is not recognized look on the Soltek site for a BIOS upgrade for your motherboard.

ESD = electrostatic discharge, i.e., ground yourself.

[ArtSiren]

drmsucks - nice to see you back. Absolutely no need to apologise! I appreciate the help you're offering to get me up and running again - something you're not obligated to do!

I'll get hold of a new battery tomorrow (as it's 9pm in the UK now) and give it a try. Thanks again.