Computer's not booting up

[Flying Mullet]

Okay, we have computer issues (my wife and I). About three months ago my wife's computer wouldn't boot up all of the time or it would hang. So we checked for windows updates and updated our virus definitions in case it was something malicious on the system. During the windows update the system would hang about 3/4 of the way through and would not complete. After that the comptuer wouldn't boot up at all. It wouldn't even let us boot up in safe mode. So we decided clear the hard drive and start over. To try and clean it as much as possible I installed Linux and formatted the drive, hoping it would help. Then I reinstalled windows on my wife's machine and it wouldn't even boot up. So we figured it was a faulty drive and got another drive froma friend. We installed XP on it and it booted up just fine and we did all of the windows updates and such for it. Then when we tried to boot it up the next time it wouldn't boot up and complained that device 0 couldn't be found. Then we tried booting it up again and this time it says that it can't find an OS. Does anyone have any ideas what is going on? It almost seems like a failure in hardware other than the harddrive, but I'm not sure. This is pushing the limits of my knowledge of the inner workings of the comptuer and I don't know how to debug it further to know if it could be something else, like a faulty bus or motherboard or if it is the harddrive.

[Baloki]

Could be the BIOS Battery has died and BIOS isn't storing any of your hardware info or boot info?

[Dr Unne]

Try to swap the IDE cable for another. Those things go bad sometimes. Pretty commonly really, from my short experience working fixing computers.

[NM]

Could be the jumper setting's on the hard drive, could be the IDE cable, could be the IDE controler on the motherboard.

1st thing to do is check that your BIOS picks up the hard drive. After that check the jumper setting's. Some hard drive's (IBM for example.) will have different jumper setting's for things like Master Single Device, Master with Slave Device. If you have a spare IDE cable try connecting that or try it with the IDE cable that is connected to your CD Drive. After that you can try switching the drive to the other IDE controller on the motherboard.

[crono_logical]

I doubt it's the BIOS/CMOS battery. Even if the configuration was lost, most BIOSes these days will autodetect IDE devices (HDs and CD/DVD etc). The boot info (which partition to boot) is stored on the HD itself. The boot order wouldn't prevent devices from being found.

I'd try what Unne/NM suggested, though as you originally suggested, it could well be the motherboard.

Just wondering, were there any problems at all when you tried linux? I'm assuming you installed it to the drive, and not used something like Knoppix.

[Flying Mullet]

Linux worked, but I only booted it once, so I don't know if it would have booted a seond time becuase I didn't try.

Also, I did try a different plug for the hard drive on the same cable, and it acted like no OS was installed, so we went through the install process/setting settings process again and such, and it put XP on again. Now when we boot, if it works it asks which OS to load, the first or second XP. Any thoughts.

[Baloki]

Linux worked, but I only booted it once, so I don't know if it would have booted a seond time becuase I didn't try.

Also, I did try a different plug for the hard drive on the same cable, and it acted like no OS was installed, so we went through the install process/setting settings process again and such, and it put XP on again. Now when we boot, if it works it asks which OS to load, the first or second XP. Any thoughts.

Thats because when you changed the cable position it changed the drive from being a master to a slave because the Hard Drive would have been on cable select. To clear it your going to need to edit the boot records, not sure if you can do it in MSConfig anymore though...

Edit: In other words wait for clout again ;_;

[crono_logical]

When you say if it works, I assume you're implying sometimes it still doesn't work? I'd guess you have faulty hardware if that's the case then

As for it asking about which copy of WinXP, did you install it on top of itself? If you did, it's probably as simple as fixing the boot.ini file in the root of the drive, using something like Notepad and removing the duplicate lines causing the double entry.

[Samuraid]

Thats because when you changed the cable position it changed the drive from being a master to a slave because the Hard Drive would have been on cable select.

Cable select. *shudder*

Sounds very much like a hardware issue.

Here's an idea...
Are you installing any of the hardware driver updates from windows update? If you are, don't. Just update drivers from the manufacturers' websites.

I don't know if this is even relevant, but I just thought I would put in my $0.02.

[Flying Mullet]

Thanks all.

I'm not having much luck with the hardware, I've tried different cables to connect the devices and triple checked the hard drive master/slave/single settings so I've decided to take a different approach and learn something in the process.

Does anyone know of any good tutorials and/or references on the web for building your own computer? I've decided that I want to try getting a new motherboard and processor and any other odds-and-ends and replace it in this desktop as it is an older one to give it more juice. I know that there is a lot of attention to detail when biulding your own computer because if the settings aren't just right you can fry your computer and yourself if you aren't careful. But I don't have the slightest idea on where to start so any reading I can do to see what I'm up against would be appreciated. Also, if anyone has any links to warehouses that sell the parts cheap on-line would be appreciated as I'm sure that it would be more expensive buying the parts from CompUsa or other such stores.

[NM]

Quick google search I found this from the first link.

http://www.pcmech.com/byopc/index.htm Looks like it cover's everything you'd need to know.

Places to buy, I can't help you with as your in the US and I live in the UK.

[Flying Mullet]

Places to buy, I can't help you with as your in the US and I live in the UK.

I'm interested in a reputable on-line vendor as they tend to be cheaper.

[Samuraid]

http://www.newegg.com

About as reputable as they come...

[meowwl]

You might want to try PC Doctor for windows..It came preinstalled on my machine, but it's saved a few headaches. It's in the pc help and tools folder..I think It comes as part of XP, but I don't swear to that.