Computer Advice Needed (Or how I learned to hate my computer)

[Dogmeat]

OK, basically, my computer is dead. About 2 months ago, I bought a barebones type unit with an IWill KA266 mainboard, a 1.2ghz athlon, and a samsung 128mb DDR ram module. On sunday, I was installing a 256 DDR crucial ram module.

Anyway, I shut the computer down, and when I powered it back on it would not boot up. No beeps, and the monitor wouldn't activate.

When I took the crucial module out, some of the contacts had been burned. I still don't know why.

Anyway, today I put back in my old Asus P2B-LS with pentium 2 350, and it booted up...sort of. When I try to boot up, I get a message saying "Secondary slave hard drive failed". However, I don't have any hard drives on the secondary thing (just a cd-rom drive) and neither are on the slave circuit.

Anyone know what gives?

ATM, I'm just going to send back the mainboard/CPU/ram package and get a new one. Also, going to send back the faulty ram module. Anyone have any idea why this happened, though, and how I can avoid it in the future?

[Lordosis]

Wow, that sucks. People say static electricity can screw up your hardware, but it's never happened to me, and I'm really not that careful. Do you have any friends that will let you swap parts out with them? If so, you can do it one at a time, to narrow it down to the MB, CPU, or RAM. That's what I had to do when I build our last batch of servers. Turns out it was a faulty motherboard.

Doesn't make any sense that your old MB/CPU doesn't work either. You're saying you only have one hard drive total and no CDROMS hooked up to it? If so, try making sure that the jumper on your drive is set to "single" and not "master". Some motherboards are picky about that and some aren't. Also, make sure your IDE cable is facing the right direction (should have a red stripe on the pin 1 side) on both ends.

[Kintoun]

If the above still doesn't fix your problem then you can just disable the Secondary Slave detector in BIOS. Hit delete during memory detection or just after and that should take you to BIOS. From here go to the Setup IDE Devices (or something to that effect) option and you should see 4 fields each labelled Primary 1,2 Secondary 1,2. On these you should see the Primary 1 be your Harddrive and the Primary 2 be your CDROM. If not the go down to auto-detect and hit enter and give it a moment. If they still don't show up then there is probably a connection problem, or something might have died. Otherwise arrow down to the Secondary 2 (slave) option and choose the none or disable option and leave it at that. Don't forget to save and exit BIOS. And don't forget what you just did cause you just disabled the detection of anything on the Secondary Slave. Eliminating this problem will most likely lead you to another, but it'll give you info as to what is causing the problem.


Oh and btw. Don't get mad at the memory. You bought the best memory that money can buy, Crucial memory kicks servere arse.

[Dogmeat]

I fixed the secondary slave problem, and everything seems to be in order (it thought my HD was on the secondary slave circuit instead of primary master. But everything's working now). None of my peripherals were damaged.

I'm just going to ship back the MB/CPU/RAM unit for a new one, and also the crucial one (and yes, I was damn shocked that crucial memory was faulty).

This is a real hassle, to say the least. At least with the 350 I have my precious cable modem..oh yes, nobody will take you away, my preciousssssss.

*grabs his modem and runs off*

[Kintoun]

HA! Precious cable modem my arse! In my area sooooo many people have cable that The ping is rarely under 200, and the UL speed is never over 10kbps. And we always get lag spikes. Stupid cable modem =\

[Dogmeat]

compared with a 56.6 worldnet (which is incredibly slow, because there are about 50k subscribers in my county), it's pretty fast. I got 200k/sec on a download earlier today.

Don't insult my precioussssss :)

[Indigo]

some mbs dont handle all kinds of memory.. some have different voltages for different types of memory.. sounds that might have been what x'd out your memory module.. static electricity does NOT burn contacts.. over voltage or a short does.. check your mb manual and make sure what you are trying to install is compatable with your mother board.