Please Help

[MACHI2222]

Hi guys. Im new to the board and desperate for advice. I have a gateway E-4000 series and I'm in the process of upgrading it. I bought a new 300watt power supply, an ATI 256mg AGP DDR2 video card, and a gig of kingston DDR SDRAM DIMM. I installed the power supply and ram (old in slot 1 and new in slot 0 = 1.277gigs) without any problems. When I went to uninstall the drivers for the old video card I click the automatic reboot option to complete installation and before it got to windows I got an error that said 'signal out of frequency' on my monitor. Long story short, I resolved that issue but had to turn my computer on and off many times in the process. Now, when I boot up, I get an the message 'A problem with the hard drive has been detected. Consult bla bla bla bla'

My question is that could this be a compatibility issue with the new power supply or the new video card? Could I have damaged my motherboard in the process? Or did I just jack up my hard drive by all the improper power downs? I've allready backed up data I need and I've accepted the fact that I'll need a new hard drive.

My second question is, if this is a hardware compatibility issue, I would like to NOT mess up my new hard drive . Any suggestions on how to see if this is a compatibility issue?

Thanks in advance for you help. Its much needed.....

 

[ski]

Go back to square 1, and install the old hardware.
If the same message appears, then make sure the HD is recognized in BIOS.
If it's not, then make sure its cables are securely connected, and the IDE 1(primary) controller is enabled in BIOS.
If those check out ok, then install a different known working IDE cable, and connect a different power lead to the HD.
If no luck, then the drive may be bad. Install it as a Slave drive in another system, and run the diagnostics at the HD manuf's site.

 

[MACHI2222]

Thanks for the quick reply ski. Heres a follow up to my post. -- There are no bad sectors or errors when I run ChkDsk in DOS mode. Also, here is more data from a program someone suggested using in a previous post.

Model Number: WDC WD800BB-53CAA1

Cylinders: 16383 Heads: 16 Sectors per track: 63

Cur Cyls: 16383 Cur Heads: 16 Cur Sectors/Track: 63

Bytes per track: 57600 Bytes per sector: 914

Gen Config: 17018 Buffer Type: 3 Buffer Size: 4096

Vendor Unique: 10 0 E More Vendor Unique: 0x8010

ECC Size: 40 Double Word IO: 0 Capabilities: 12032

PIO Timing: 640 DMA Timing: 0 BS: 7

Current Sector Capacity: 16514064 Total Addressable Sectors: 156301488

Mult. Sector Stuff: 272 Single Word DMA: 0 Multi Word DMA: 7



SMART ATTRIBUTES:

ID Description Raw Value Status Value Worst Threshold

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

1 Raw Read Error Rate 675 OK 137 1 51

3 Spin Up Time 4233ms OK 97 92 21

4 Start/Stop Count 2054 OK 98 98 40

5 Reallocated Sector Count 0 OK 200 200 140

7 Seek Error Rate 0 OK 200 200 51

9 Power On Time 13395 OK 82 82 0

A Spin Retry Count 0 OK 100 100 51

B Calibration Retry Count 0 OK 100 100 51

C Power Cycle Count 1753 OK 99 99 0

C4 Reallocation Event Count 0 OK 200 200 0

C5 Current Pending Sector Count 1 OK 200 200 0

C6 Offline Scan Incorrect. Sector Count 0 OK 200 200 0

C7 Ultra ATA CRC Error Count 0 OK 200 253 0

C8 Write Error Count 0 OK 200 200 51

Everything looks ok. Thats why I don't understand whats going on.

 

[MACHI2222]

Ok guys-- another update... I just ran the Western Digital diagnostic software and on the SMART test the Raw Read Error Rate says its FAILED.

Does this mean I need a new hard drive???????????

 

[ski]

Yep.

 

[MACHI2222]

On the WD diagnostic it says SMART Status - Fail

Raw Read Error Rate
ID Value Threshold Worst Warrant
1 198 51 1 1

In all the other Categories the worst is higher than the threshold. I'm assuming thats why this test failed. In the previous independent software diagnostic test I posted why did it pass even thouhgh the worst value was below the threshold??

 

[jurgen36]

Not necessarely, I believe your powersupply with 300 watts can not deliver the power you need. A relative modern machine needs at least 400 watts continues. So if you can change the power supply to a bigger one and all might be ok. If you have drives go on line they can have initially a large current. The supply might not be able to deliver it and of course you get drive errors.
Regards

Jurgen

 

[jurgen36]

An add on, yes if the power supply can not deliver enough power you can dammage your drive.
Regards

Jurgen

 

[ski]

Did you reinstall the old hardware and see if the HD error message still appears, as previously suggested?

 

[MACHI2222]

Ski,

Reinstalling the old hardware is my next step. However, since the computer slows to a near stand still when I attempt to access the internet, I need the disk with the drivers for the old video card. My friend is mailing this to me as I type this. Once I get that I'll be able to reinstall all the old hardware. Do you think I should even remove the new ram?? Also, if this does not work, I'm going to put the new hardware in again and reformat my hard drive by reinstalling windows. That way, if this is a bios or software problem the reinstall should fix it.

If these things fail....Can you guys think of any more options I have short of buying a new hard drive?

 

[MACHI2222]

JURGEN,

I don't think its my power supply or at least I hope not. My old power supply was 160Watts. Like I said before, the new one is 300. Thats almost a 100% increase. The only new things I've added were a new video card and a gig of ram. If its the power supply then that means the video card and ram are sucking up over 140Watts combined! Granted the video card does have a fan on it but the supply upgrade should be enough to run another computer!

 

[ski]

Reverting to the original hardware setup(incl. the old RAM and power supply) will tell you if the HD is bad.

If the HD works ok with the original hardware, then it's possible that the new power supply is not able to do the job with the upgraded video card and RAM, like jurgen suggests.
All PS's are not created equal, i.e., a high quality 160 watt unit may be able to run a system that can cause a low quality 300 watt unit to fall flat on its face, especially with a more powerful video card and an additional RAM module pulling more power off the PS's 3.3V and 5.0V legs.