Hardware problems...my own fault, any advice....?

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The first foolish thing I will have done is use 2 OEM Windows operating
systems on the one computer. This occurred to me after I heard clacking in
the computer and for a month I thought the clacking noise was made by a fan.
Then I opened the case and saw sparks flashing each time there was a clack in
the PCI slot that held a Sata Raid addon card.
Oh well I think...I think I will need a new motherboard...but do I ?
I had OEM Windows XP Pro 64bit dual booting with OEM Windows XP Home
Edition SP2 and clever me thought a little performance boost might help with
a few extra high harddrive voltages and so on and maximum bios settings
because I play some games online and inhome.
Would anyone care to make any comments about this situation please?
Now I have removed the sata raid addon card and returned to using Windows
XP Home Edition by itself and am using as near to the default bios settings
as I can.
Also I have 4 front case LEDs and 1 now does not go. It died in the last
few days. I'm wondering what may happen next.
 
umwhat said:
The first foolish thing I will have done is use 2 OEM Windows operating
systems on the one computer. This occurred to me after I heard clacking in
the computer and for a month I thought the clacking noise was made by a fan.
Then I opened the case and saw sparks flashing each time there was a clack in
the PCI slot that held a Sata Raid addon card.
Oh well I think...I think I will need a new motherboard...but do I ?
I had OEM Windows XP Pro 64bit dual booting with OEM Windows XP Home
Edition SP2 and clever me thought a little performance boost might help with
a few extra high harddrive voltages and so on and maximum bios settings
because I play some games online and inhome.
Would anyone care to make any comments about this situation please?
Now I have removed the sata raid addon card and returned to using Windows
XP Home Edition by itself and am using as near to the default bios settings
as I can.
Also I have 4 front case LEDs and 1 now does not go. It died in the last
few days. I'm wondering what may happen next.
Click to expand...

Translating that, I think you are saying the SATA RAID card
has a short either near the connector or with some component on the SATA
RAID card itself.

Things to do:

1) Remove SATA RAID card. Purchase a replacement, if you want continued
access to the RAID array.

2) Inspect PCI slot for damage. You might well have burned a pin on the
motherboard connector. If connector is damaged, replace motherboard
(or stop using that PCI slot and label the slot as defective).

It takes a strong light source, and a magnifying glass, to get a good
look at the pins.

3) If PCI slot is not visually damaged, purchase a cheap PCI card for testing.
Some big box computer stores have a barrel full of $10 networking cards.
Purchase a $10 networking card and plug it into the PCI slot. Test the
card function. If the card works, chances are the slot is OK.

If you get that far, you might then consider plugging the replacement
SATA RAID card into the system.

Selecting extra high voltages for Vcore and Vdimm in the BIOS, has nothing
to do with the SATA RAID card. The only way "hard drive voltages" could
get raised, is to open the power supply and fiddle with any potentiometers
in there that adjust +5V/+12V voltages. (Since a lot of power supplies do not
have adjustments inside, don't waste your time looking for such :-) Only a few
power supplies had adjustments.)

So the most likely cause, is the SATA RAID card has a manufacturing
defect. Depending on your luck, the PCI slot could be damaged or not.
Simply not using that PCI slot is one solution. But you'll eventually
have to decide what to do about being able to connect your SATA disks.

Paul
 
umwhat said:
The first foolish thing I will have done is use 2 OEM Windows operating
systems on the one computer. This occurred to me after I heard clacking in
the computer and for a month I thought the clacking noise was made by a fan.
Then I opened the case and saw sparks flashing each time there was a clack in
the PCI slot that held a Sata Raid addon card.
Oh well I think...I think I will need a new motherboard...but do I ?
I had OEM Windows XP Pro 64bit dual booting with OEM Windows XP Home
Edition SP2 and clever me thought a little performance boost might help with
a few extra high harddrive voltages and so on and maximum bios settings
Click to expand...

<snip>

I'm not sure what you did to boost the harddrive voltage...but I'm sure your
machine will soon be destroyed
if you keep going that route!
 
Thankyou for your replies men.
I will look at the PCI slot tomorrow. I may even have an ethernet card
here. I used the PCI1 slot beside the AGP slot. There is a setting for
Strong or Normal for the harddrives in the Bios. The motherboard is an Asrock
775V88+. I did kind of gaze into the PCI slot to see what I could see the
other day and it did not appear damaged at all. I did buy the Sata Raid card
second hand but it was cheap but it is a quality manufacturers card...if I
can say that at all.
Well the solutions to my problems with this have come quickly thankyou very
much indeed.
Windows very nicely returned the page file to the C: drive after I shifted
it to its own partition 3 days ago. The computer would not boot into
Windows...I was given the options to choose Last Known Good Configuration but
the keyboard would not operate at that screen so I loaded the bios defaults
with some help from above I must say, and then I chose Last Known Good
Configuration...I felt pretty good but I felt even better when I saw Windows
had moved the page file back to C: drive.

Thankyou again.
 
Paul,
....a month or so ago I discovered an extra motherboard mount after the PSU
began spitting sparks. The PSU died. That was really rather frightening
turning the PSU switch on and off for a couple of weeks because it would
short and spark. But the mount melted some of the resin on the motherboard
but had not appeared to have damaged the wires around the melted resin so I
have continued to use it.
 
Before removing the card; with power off check that the Raid card is not
loose and is fully inserted into the PCI slot.
Next I would remove the Raid card and check the contacts on the card for any
burn marks. Check the PCI slot as mentioned earlier by Paul.

JS
 
I have since removed the sata raid addon card. The contacts on the card are
ok. The card has 2 sata connectors and the sata connector at the end the
sparks came from in the slot had a connector to the harddrive that SeaTools
told me it could not pass the Long or the Short, is it DST tests, tests but
it would let me store a few folders on it. I have removed that harddrive so
now I have only one sata harddrive running.
I will probably look at the PCI slot today but I'm not sure I have a
bright enough lamp...thinking about that now.
 
The sata raid card was not loose. Earlier I had the card in PCI3 but because
I wanted to reinstall the operating system I moved the card to PCI1. I had
the high settings enabled when the card was in PCI3 but there was no sparking
in the PCI3.There was clacking(the harddrive making that noise) when the card
was in PCI3.
 
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