Ciao, dudes and dudettes,

When it comes to pin headers from the chassis that connect to pins on the motherboard, such as POWER SW, RESET, HDD LED, etc., the black wire is "ground" and the white wire is "active," from my understanding.

But what if I have a white wire and a blue (or red, green, etc.) wire (most of my pin headers have different colors; a white wire is USUALLY but not always the common denominator)? Which wire is ground then?

Possibly related question:

I built my Dad a new computer per his request, the only original parts being his IDE hard drive, DVD burner and floppy drive.

After installing a fresh copy of Windows XP Pro onto this drive after connecting the new hardware, I learned the hard way that this drive was probably faulty (which my Dad conveniently forgot to tell me) and kept getting "Drive Read Error Press CTRL+ALT+DEL to restart" after POST but it went away when I moved the ZIP drive that was on the same primary IDE channel as the hard drive to the secondary IDE channel (alternatively, I could have just disabled UDMA on the hard drive, but that would slow everything down and was thus NOT a tenable solution).

Anyways, he made me build it all over again cuz he wanted a new case, and I put in a new SATA hard drive that he had me buy (kept the original IDE as primary master on the IDE channel in case I needed anything, cuz um, I had gone through all the work of installing everything for him and feel tempted to just GHOST over the hard drive image, but that would probably be dumb if there is something wrong with the original IDE drive), which worked when I booted and went into Windows...


...but then I got a BSOD, something about "Machine_Check_Exception" and can't even get the computer beyond POST (well, it does randomly get past POST, but when in Windows soon crashes with the same BSOD).

What can cause this? Maybe I incorrectly reconnected something when I put everything in his new computer case? Or maybe the two hard drives don't play nicely together, or there isn't enough power...?

AARGH! I wanna cry... <sniff> ;)

Here are the specs of the computer I built for him:

AMD Athlon 64 3200+
MSI K8N Neo2 Platinum mainboard (latest firmware)
2x 512 MB Kingston DDR400 (PC3200) RAM
250 GB Seagate Barracuda 7200.8 SATA HDD (ST3250823AS)
XFX GeForce MX4000 Video Card (he's a business user, so this is adequate)
LGE GSA-4120B DVD+-RW/CD-RW drive
Iomega ZIP 100 ATAPI drive
Floppy Drive

Grazie!

Re. your first question, if you look very closely at the plug your are plugging into any of those headers, often the hot lead will be marked with a small arrow or something like that. I understand your confusion, and on one or more mobos I've set up, that arrow or similar marker was present.

Can you be more succinct re. the second problem? I'm not clear if you actually installed windows to the sata drive and then got the error upon boot, or whether you got the error during installation. If you plan on installing windows to the sata drive, personally I'd pull the ide with windows out of the system, no need for it there. I'd want to make sure that the bios recognizes the sata drive, then install windows. Make sure you have the sata drivers available on a floppy during your installation.

marty

Hi, Marty,

Thanks for being the only person to reply! =)

Hot leads: how do I know which exactly is the hot lead? What does the marking look like, and is it just above the pin that's "hot" (active)?

As for the second problem and for which you asked a question -- the IDE drive and IDE drive alone has Windows XP. The SATA drive is clean and has never had anything installed to it.

Thanks again,

-Rob

With reset and power on it doesnt matter which way the wires go; they are simple switches that just short the connection. With the HDD LED they will work one way and not the other way round. I assume a hot lead is one that wants to find earth.

If you are booting to the HDD from the BIOS you will need to have installed the SATA drivers to that installation before the Sata can be recognised. Check Device Manager for any yellow exclamation marks.

In order to install onto the SATA you must have the appropriate boot order setting set in the BIOS; this is usually a SATA/SCSI/RAID setting. Also, as mentioned, you will probably need the Sata Drivers on a floppy and hit F6 very soon after setup begins; look for the prompt at the bottom of the screen.

PATA/IDEs and SATAs should work together just fine but having a mix may make it more complicated to follow just exactly what is doing what.

Paul's description of the leads is on the mark, either they'll work or not, though I'm not positive re. his comments on the switch plugs, they may have to be lined up correctly to work. Again, on the plugs, look for a small arrow on the plastic right next to one of the leads at either end. That is your positive (hot) if I recall correctly. You need to be looking at your mobo manual as well to see which pin for that connection on the mobo is the positive.

Re. the other situation, you should not be getting that error if you have your OS on the ide hdd and the sata drive is simply blank at this point. More than likely, your mobo simply would not recognize the sata drive and nothing more. In any case, you had some errors when installing the OS previously. My suggestion would be to make a decision what hdd you want to use for your OS, then pull out the zip drive (you have problems with this before, so pull it) and have only your primary hdd (sata or ide) and your optical drive and floppy drive, and then install your OS. IMHO, I find it best to keep the system very simple during OS install, for if you install it properly, then it should recognize any hardware you later install, and if it doesn't, then likely there is a problem with that hardware or the drivers that run it. But doing a basic install with the minimum of components makes it much much easier to troubleshoot problems.


Also, if your dad wants this system, have him think about coughing up $60 bucks or so for a new ide hdd and return the old one, or keep it and erase everything that is on it. I mean, if in doubt on a hdd that is going to hold your OS, get a new one. The headaches and uncertainty just aren't worth it, especially with a brand-new amd 64 system. If you plan on using that hdd in your system, either as your OS drive or a storage drive, then I'd use a hdd utility to completly wipe the drive clean, copy zeros, whatever. Sometimes old installations of windows can mess up a fresh windows installation.

Good luck.

marty

Alex 666 and Paul give some good information and will help you get this sorted out!

For us others out here watching this thread can you clear up a couple things?

the only original parts being his IDE hard drive
After installing a fresh copy of Windows XP Pro onto this drive after connecting the new hardware, I learned the hard way that this drive was probably faulty

It appears you have had prior problems with this old IDE drive, is that correct?

Anyways, he made me build it all over again cuz he wanted a new case, and I put in a new SATA hard drive that he had me buy (kept the original IDE as primary master on the IDE channel in case I needed anything
You now have a brand new SATA HDD, correct, but you still kept the IDE drive as Primary master with the OS?

This next advice is if I understand your original question. Alex 666 has already given some of this advice also.

Your SATA drive is newer technology, will have better performance, and is probably the drive you will want your OS on. You might consider completely removing the IDE drive from the PC for now. Install a clean version of your OS on the SATA drive, get everything up and running, then install your IDE drive and use the Manufacturers software to copy over your data. You can then reformat your IDE drive and see how it works as an extra drive.

Yah, IDE was original drive and had the OS installed on it -- I had taken a ton of time to install everything to the drive manually (I don't have an automated way of doing it) and ghosted an image of the install in case my Dad ever had problems.

I was trying to be lazy because I didn't want to reinstall everything to the newer SATA hard drive he had me pick out for him given that he conveniently remembered (and personally discovered at about the same time) that this original IDE drive "had problems" (computer would very rarely lock up or BSOD, would not work with UDMA on in the BIOS when a Zip drive was on the same IDE channel -- so either UDMA for the drive was to be turned off ... not good ... or the Zip drive put on the other IDE channel or removed entirely).

Everthing is cool now -- I securely wiped the original IDE hard drive with Eraser and then No*Trace (Darrik's Boot & Nuke, found on SourceForge, does not work too well with floppies for booting, blah), removed it, reinstalled everything to the SATA, ghosted and gave it to him.

And I found out what caused the MACHINE_CHECK_EXCEPTION Blue Screen of Death (BSOD) ... get this, I somehow didn't have the power or IDE cable for the Zip drive (or was it the floppy?) connected. Yet it still booted and gave errors ONLY after going into Windows.

Weird, huh?

As for my own computer, which I finally got around to finishing and trying to boot into... it locks up ... both in the BIOS and when trying to install WinXP Pro from the CD. =(

The only things I can think of are: too many ground pins going into the motherboard for the front-panel IEEE1394 connection, the red pin for the floppy drive is on the wrong side, something is grounding the motherboard out, the motherboard is damaged, the gold fingers for the PCI add-in cards such as analog modem and tv tuner are not fully seated (not sure why, as I only installed the correct number of brass standoffs into my computer chassis, so maybe the height is off or the chassis' tray is warped.. GAH!)...

And, of course, the more ominous stuff: bad power supply (PSU), bad RAM...

Too bad most of the more skilled (1337, haha) geeks I know from RIT have moved from Rochester (AKA Rottenchester). After all the work I've done, I really don't find it fun to screw with mine. I'm almost willing to pay someone to fix it so I don't freak and go postal on my computer. Anyone from my area on PCGuide? =)

FWIW, I have an Asus A8N-SLI Deluxe with an AMD Athlon 64 3200+ using one Corsair platinum CAS2 DDR400 (PC3200) RAM DIMM.

Any thoughts might help me salvage some of my sanity. =)

Thanks!

Congrats on your dad's system. RE. yours, I'd pull eveything out except the one hdd on which you plan to install your OS, cpu, hsf, memory, psu, and one optical drive when installing your OS. If need be, just detach the front panel stuff. Simplify, simplify. I've had trouble with front panel stuff, too, in one case I found that the manual that I had actually had the wiring wrong re. the main front panel power switch, and somehow much later I figured this out. But initially I was able to get the system up and running without that switch.

My other suggestion would be to go to the following forum and and post your problem, you should be able to get some good help from fellow Asus A8N-SLI Deluxe owners:

http://forums.pcper.com/forumdisplay.php?f=8

Good luck.

marty