Help - Drive not ready-system halted.

First off, I just want to thank anyone who takes the time to read my post. I am very frustrated with all of this.

I have an Intel MOBO Dg850 P4 1.5
OS is WINXP PRO
80 GB Hard Drive
256 pc800 Ram

What happened? I bought a new exhaust fan that glows and cables that glow. All I did was install the new fan and then unplug the cables and then plug the new ones in and everything went wrong.

Nothing works at all now. When I boot up, no beeps on the Mobo anymore and blank screen that says "Drive not ready- system halted.

The Mobo light comes on and all the fans work and I can get into the Bios. I used to get several beeps when the computer originally booted up now nothing. I tried going back to load default settings, nothing. I tried booting from cd rom, nothing, a: drive, nothing. All the same emssage no matter what I do, drive not ready system halted. How in the world could this have happened from just unplugging cables in, installing new ones and putting in a new fan that glows? I am incredibly frustrated by this and becoming depressed to be honest.

I pulled the cpu and all the memory and drives and put it all back in. When I rebooted, the MOBO actually made the normal beeps but went to black screen with same message. When I rebooted again, no beeps and same message. I cannot believe that changing cords could actually do this.

On a side note, I did have the BDD trojan virus which was home shoping search or something else. I down loaded hijackthis and AVG7 and it seemed to get ird of it. I am not sure if this is a coincidence at all.

Is my MOBOA AND OVERALL COMPUTER RUINED? I really, really appreciate any help at all. Thank you very much.

........................Patrick

 

For kicks, pull the power to the cd-rom drive and try booting again.
I have a feeling it's one of two things.
1. addtion of glowing goodies is drawing more power and it can't provide enough for the HDD
2. cables were attached wrong.

 

Go with the easiest solution first, remove what you installed, and try it again. If it returns to normal, add a piece at a time til you have issues. I'm with Kodo, it sounds like a Power Supply/Power Distribution problem. Cut your power consumption down first, then see if your system comes back up. You didn't mention how big your PS was in Wattage! If it's below 350 or 400 at a minimum, then there might be where your problem lies!

Sometimes things go bad at unexpected times, hopefully you don't now happen to have a bad/corrupted hdd that just happened at the same time. I hate to say it, but it does happen! Good Luck!

wuf@bark.arf

 

Thanks for the replies guys, I really appreciate it.

I pulled every cord out then put my old cables back in and same results. I did however leave the new fan in which glows. It is just an exhaust fan that glows. My Power Supply is 350w. I didnt think it could eat that much up. I am not sure about the cables themselves. I also bought a pci slot fan that glows. I had all of this hooked up and this was happening. I tried the old cords in with the new fan and all of that happened. Maybe I should try to put back in the old fan and see what happens?

I thought I was putting the cables in right. Blue end into motherboard (white part of mobo) then black end to hard drive while grey end dangles. Other blue end into black insertion of MOBO and both black cable ends into dvd and cdrw.

If my MOBO goes into Bios etc.. and all fans light up, then it must be o.k. right? I really appreciate you guys replying.

 

For the HDD, (re: cable) the blue goes into the motherboard and the other END (not middle port if there is one) goes into the HDD. Make sure the side with the red stripe ( or pin1) matches to pin 1 on the ide port on the hdd (typically the pin closest to the to power connector).

 

The cables that are supposed to glow (but didnt for whatever reason, they are UV Cables) dont have any kind of red stripe or anything. They are just the skinny space saving kind.

You think its the power supply? I dont think its the MOBO.

Good luck to the Orange in the Tourney KODO.

 

At the moment all you need plugged in are these-

main motherboard power
gfx card
ram
harddrive,ide cable,1-4pin molex power

Until you get your os to load dont have anything else plugged in and double check eack of these connections.

 

Someone mentioned that static electricity could ruin the MOBO? I wonder what could go wrong if that happened? possible my memory is messed up? its weird, I have two sticks of pc800 128 Ram and in the other two slots, I have some kind of memory sticks but not sure what they are.

In the Bios it does not recognize those other two things. They look like memory but its not like the Ram . When I pull all of them out of the 4 total slots, the MOBO beeps off and on , off and on. I think I might have jostled one of the other types of memory or whatever it is.

If all else fails, what could possibly be the problem in any of your estimations?

 

Well unplugged everything just the hard drive and same results. Tried different cables etc.. Nothing seems to work. I dont know what happened to the beeps on the MOBO but everything comes on etc...

Static elctricity damage? should I try the CMOS resetting? I am basically about to give up on everything and it sucks because everything was just fine until I tried to put new cables in. Something as simple as that and now my computer seems totally ruined.

 

Swapped Hard Drives, reset CMOS eventhough it said CMOS low and I throw my hands in the air folks. Everything sounds like it is running fine but no beeps on MOBO and same message drive not ready-system halted.

SHOULD I just go ahead and assume its all over for the computer?

 

Well, I have exhausted all possible solutions to no avail. I work here at Seagate and I will let one of the technicians take a look but I have ABSOLUTELY not a clue what it could be. I am baffled to say the least. Have completely reset everything, checked the MOBO,CMOS,BIOs etc.. nothing works. Everything comes on but no drives are detected. MOBO seems to be in fine working condition and Bios is set to boot harddrive first. Just wont work. Strangest thing I haver ever seen or heard of when troubleshooting computers. Any more advice from anyone in this room is greatly appreciated.

 

well, it definately sounds like the IDE ports are not functional.

 

Well I said the heck with it. I will pull the CPU, fan etc.. and just use the case and power supply with a new motherboard.

I just bought from new egg an AMD 64 3500 socket 939 with a good MOBO and blue glowing case with 480 watt power supply.

Now I am scared to death to even try and put it together.lol Is it really that easy? I have never put a system together before? any tips for a new beginner?