Computer Store Bloopers

[RedOpsWolverine]

I recently went to work on a PC for my Fiance's boss.
When I started working on the PC the symtoms were lockups on bootup and harddrive clicking (stalling) with the error message at bootup the there may be bad sectors on the drive. This system is about 7mnths old.
The system is a Duron 700 with Nvida 32 card and 128MB memory with Windows 98 SE loaded on a WD 20 ATA66mhz drive. Problem: It had intergrated sound that the Builder had disabled and stuck in a SBLive Value, for no apparent reason, and charged for. Even put electrical tape on the Integrated sound plugin ports. Also..Instead of running the Liteon CD-Rom on Secondary IDE he slaved it off the WD Hardrive on the ATA 66 special cable instead of putting in a second ATA 33 cable on the secondary and running the CD-Rom there.
Now he wants to say that he disagrees that it is wrong to setup the PC the way he did and refuses to fix it. The guy doesn't even relize the Motherboard will run PC133 and he put PC 100 in the system.
I have seen systems not even boot or even burn up a CD or HD because of this SLAVE mistake instead of running ATA 33. You can't run CD-ROMs on ATA 66 or 100 yet.
Care to express your opinion?

 

[iSeriesCodePoet]

I totally disagree...Yes he should have put in PC133 RAM. But it is common practice amoung OEMs to put both the HD and the CD-ROM on the same controller. The only problem that should occur is the hard drive won't run at its full potential. If you can't get anywhere with him. Go strait to WD. They are quite good about taking car of that. I have the same problem with mine, however it never god bad enough to where it would mess me up too much. They offered to replace if I was overly concerned about it, but since the tech said that it is nothing to worry about, I decided not to. However, I think your HD should be replaced. Mike Wills
RPG Programmer

"I am bad at math because God forgot to include math.h into my programming!"

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[butchrecon]

Actually after running a Store for 3 years I can say its not common practice in this area. I always made my techs (and so did nearly all other stores in town) Make sure the Hard Drive was on IDE 1 and the CDROM was on IDE 2. Two Hard Drives were always put on the same as was 2 CDROMS (CDR/DVD and CDROM). We always ensured that the proper RAM was alwasy installed. I have never herd of the CDROM/Hard Drive combos Burn up or not boot (at least with Win98). An as for sticking in a SBlive and disabling the onboard sund, why do that? Was it bad? If so why not replace it?

Any way this is my 2 cents worth. James Collins
Systems Support Engineer
A+, MCP

email: butchrecon@skyenet.net

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[iSeriesCodePoet]

Okay....let me define what I meant by OEM. HP, Comptrash, eCrashine, and Packard Hell.

The computer place I used to work at actuall did the same thing. I believe most Dells, Gateways, and Microns are on seperate though. Mike Wills
RPG Programmer

"I am bad at math because God forgot to include math.h into my programming!"

Please let us (Tek-Tips members) know if the solutions I provide are helpful to you. Not only do my posts help you but they may help others.

 

[RedOpsWolverine]

When it is causing the problem is that the Harddrive is on a ATA 66-100 cable...CD-Roms are not that fast yet...They only run ATA 33..So what happens is like overclocking the CPU or Ram..The bios chip in the CD-ROM is not designed to transfer that fast..So it either won't recognize..Locks up on boot...Or burns up Drive after long use. I had a CD-Rom that was 52X Phobe so I thought it could run ATA 100. When I ran it, it was good for about 6mnths..Then all of a sudden the computer stopped booting period. No Video even.
I thought I burned up the Motherboard or something..SO I did the unhook all but the video, and Harddrive test and it rebooted. After pluggin things in one by on when I got to the CD-Rom it wouldn't boot..After replacement and setting back on the ATA 33 all is fine..I am on that PC now. So save the hastle and just put it on IDE 2.

 

[FoxPacific]

After reading this I have a question. I have an old Dell L400C. When I had the HD on IDE1 and CD on IDE2 the system would not recognize the CD drive at all. So I slaved it off the HD and it's been working fine for the past month or two. I figured that maybe the IDE port on the MB was shot or something (which would be fine cause as long as the CD works nothing else needs to be hooked up to it). Now my questions:

1) Could it be that I was probably using a 66 cable when I should have been using a 33 cable?

2) Am I setting myself up to buy a new drive by continuing to have it set up this way?

Thanks in advance for any help provided.

Aloha,

James

 

[dakota81]

In response to the previous post about CDRom's on the second port, am I guessing correctly that your Dell still has Windows 95 on it? I remember back when, there were several issues with Win95 not working with a secondary harddrive port if a harddrive was not attached to it, I know this was a problem with Toshiba CDRom's, probably someothers too.

If not then I'm not sure why that might be. And yes, if a drive isn't ata66 or 100, I would always use the 40pin ide cable, not the 80pin; I've got a Creative Labs DVD drive that will not read CDs nor DVDs with an 80pin cable.