Hello,

Last week our Win 2000 computer would not boot up. The “Windows is Starting Up” screen would appear, however it would then freeze at that screen. I tried logging into Safe mode, and the same thing would happen.

I tried repairing the installation with the Win 2000 disc, and the same problem occurred upon restart. I then tried installing a new installation of Windows on the same disc, however after rebooting my computer locks up while the installation program detects my hardware configuration.

My initial impression was that I had a hard disc failure, so this weekend I purchased and installed a new hard disc. Upon installing Windows, I reboot my machine and my computer once again locks up while detecting my hardware configuration.

It is now evident that I have some sort of hardware issue; however I’m not sure how to diagnose it. This problem sounds like a motherboard failure to me however could it also be the power supply?

Any ideas would be greatly appreciated.

Jeremy

Hya Jcojans1, welcome to PCHF.

Have you also tried to reinstall with all non essential hardware removed?

Let's have a look if it might be a ram problem, download and copy this app to a floppy:

http://www.memtest.org/download/1.65....65.floppy.zip
From here:
http://www.memtest.org/

And run it by booting up the pc with the floppie in the drive.

Thanks for the info Joe.

I ran MemTest last night, and my memory appears to be free of errors.

After running MemTest, I booted my machine off the CDROM that shipped with my new hard drive so that I could check the integrity of each drive. Both my old drive and my new drive came back as being faulty due to some fatal errors that occured while they were being tested. I'm sure that the drives themselves are not faulty, however my guess is that it is the disk controller on the motherboard.

My machine is equppied with 2 IDE ports and two Ultra66 ID ports. Originally, my CDROMs were connected to the two IDE ports, and my hard drive was connected to one of the Ultra66 ports. When I began having problems last week, I moved the ribbon cable from the first Ultra66 port to the second unused Ultra66 port. My machine worked fine for a day, and then the problems continued. This leads me to believe that something is wrong with the Promise Ultra66 chip on my motherboard.

After running MemTest last night, I moved the master CDROM from IDE 1 to IDE 2, removed my old hard drive, and plugged my new hard drive into IDE 1. So now I only have my new hard drive and one CDROM connected through the IDE ports, skipping the Ultra66 ports completely.

Now my machine will not boot up, even from a floppy disk. Do you think my BIOS is looking for a drive on one of the Ultra66 ports and because it doesn't find one it refuses to boot up? Can I disable the Ultra66 ports completely so that my devices are connected to the IDE ports only?

Thanks,
Jeremy