I installed a new secondary hard drive, and my system hangs, almost randomly. I suspect a few things, and here are my specs:

Windows XP Pro
AMD Athlon 1.4GHz
Tyan Trinity KT-A, a KT133-A motherboard
256MB RAM
GeForce2 MX400 64MB
One Maxtor 8.1GB Drive, Primary IDE Master
One Maxtor/COMPUSA 80GB Drive, Primary IDE Slave <--This is the new drive
Generic CD-RW, Secondary IDE Master
IBM CD-ROM, Secondary IDE Slave
Philips Harmonic Edge sound card
Creative V.90 Modem Blaster
As a side note, I bought a ThermalTake Dragon ORB 3 because I was overheating and hanging.

Here are my ideas about whats going on:

Slave not set correctly on new drive
The fan may need some thermal grease(does it slowly burn away?)
One disk is formatted as Basic, the other Dynamic.
Windows doesn't cooperate with my drives, and I need to reinstall XP again...and again...and again...
The PSU isn't high enough quality(its 300W-350W, somewhere in there)

If there is ANYWAY to troubleshoot, don't hesitate to tell me! I really need to fix this!

An Athlon 1.4, 5 drives (you have a floppy on this thing right?), a Dragon Orb, a Geforce vid card and an unknown number of case fans....hmm, be pushing a 300W PSU, maybe even a 350 depending on the quality of it.

Yes, depending on the quality of the thermal compound, but it usually takes several years...

Dynamic and basic shouldn't matter....

But I really suspect the PSU was just barely powerful enough before you added the second hard drive and now depending on what is going on there isn't quite enough power.

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mjc
Links list:Computer Links (http://www.dreamwater.org/tech/mjc/index.htm)

Celts are the men that heaven made mad, For all their battles are merry and their songs are all sad.

Arrgh...I downloaded SiSoftware Sandra to install on a PC i'm building for a friend, and decided to run it on my system. I tried the burn-in wizard, and set it up to run CPU Benchmark and CPU Multimedia Benchmark 10 times. At the end, it was at 141.7F according to Sandra. The problem is probably overheating, suprisingly.

I'm wondering, if the Thermaltake thermal paste is so bad that it burned away after 6 months. My fan runs at 7000 RPMs, so its really odd. Any suggestions/help?

First thing: get a power supply with more oomph right away. If you can afford it, I would suggest going all the way to 400W. I had a somewhat similar problem last week (aggravated by a lot of dust), though my temperatures didn't get quite as high, fortunately; the basic problem was not enough ventilation coupled with an inadequate PS (a four-year-old 250W that had been built before anyone had ever heard of the Athlon, let alone the Duron).

So: (1) Get the most powerful power supply you can afford, and make sure it's certified for use with AMD-based systems. (2) Check your CPU cooling assembly; you can always try a new cooling fan (and, as I mentioned over on the Upgrading forum, I've heard about those new cooling devices that you fit around the whole CPU assembly that can really bring the temeperatures plummeting). (3) Get at least one more fan for your case. I recommend a turbine/exhaust unit something like the FC-2000B; you fit that one into an expansion slot, and it will blow blasts of cold air through the interior and push hot air out the back of the system. I can tell you from personal experience that it works; my delicate system boards and expansion boards have been holding rock-steady at 75 - 76 degrees F since I did that installation last week.

-Joe-

P.S. I would recommend switching your hard drives around so that the 80-gig unit becomes the master, and your old 8.1 GB the slave. It's always better, when you have two HD's in a system, to have the newer, faster one be the master, since (among other reasons) you always need to put your swap file on the fastest HD.

Originally posted by Dunkalis:
Arrgh...I downloaded SiSoftware Sandra to install on a PC i'm building for a friend, and decided to run it on my system. I tried the burn-in wizard, and set it up to run CPU Benchmark and CPU Multimedia Benchmark 10 times. At the end, it was at 141.7F according to Sandra. The problem is probably overheating, suprisingly.

I'm wondering, if the Thermaltake thermal paste is so bad that it burned away after 6 months. My fan runs at 7000 RPMs, so its really odd. Any suggestions/help?

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Alternate email: joea64@yahoo.com

[This message has been edited by joea64 (edited 05-15-2002).]