Please Help be fore I kill it.

I have been from 8AM to just before I posted this 8:30PM. trying to fix this friends computer. About 3 months ago his cd-rom and then his HD both fried or whatever basically his comp stopped working. So I got a new CD-ROM and a new HD to put in. I set the CD-Rom to cable select plugged the IDE with the red stripe on pin one and using disk 0 end. I did exact same with the HD. plugged the both correctly into the MB. got my win98 start disk put it in the floppy drive and booted her up. selected with cd-rom support from the menu. ran fdisk.exe and made a new fat32 partition. then formated it. rebooted switched to cd-rom. opened it inserted win98 cd. closed it and the comp restarts. hmm that wierd trys again. restart. and again and again and agian ect. now its begining to act funky. sometimes it start to the menu other times it keeps restarting once it shows the compaq logo. sometimes it dosen't start at all. Si I try every possible way of connecting the cables. I try both using master and cable select on both the HD and HD. everything I can think of. of course it will only start up with the cables in the correct position. so I try a spare CD-rom drive I have. know all it does is show the green light on the cd drive and keeps making a clicking sound like it's trying to read a cd but theres nothing in there. I try aother cd drive same thing. the mother f***ing computer is driving my crazy I literally was about to blow it to bits with my shotgun . wtf is the matter with this thing what am I doing wrong or not doing.

 

come on you guys. I need help.

 

I can only tell you that it's time to buy a new computer because it sounds like something in the bios or the motherboard is going out.

 

How did you determine the HD and CD drive went bad? It seems a little strange that two pieces of unrelated hardware failed, without there being an underlying cause, and while a bad HD might cause the PC to stop loading up, a bad CD drive isn't going to cause the system to stop working. What troubleshooting did you do prior to replacing the HD and CD drive? If you disconnect the CD drive and HD, what happens when you try to turn the PC on?

Repeated reboots can be caused by a lot of things. Start troubleshooting the other parts of the PC, especially the powersupply and motherboard. A bad powersupply or blown caps on the mobo can cause random rebooting. So can overheating parts, badly seated expansion cards (like your graphics card) and on and on. You didn't give much computer info, but you said "compaq" so I'll include the warning that they use a proprietary power supply for their small towers and their motherboards are also custom designed (though I was informed a mini atx will work for their cases, I haven't tried it). I had a processor I rescued from a Compaq fail on me (it was over 3 years old) Processor failure isn't real common, but it does happen.

 

Oh I would say bad memory, right now, run mem test 86 or something like that. NOW if it is bad memory WOAH nelly three bad components at once, new computer is right. You could have a bad power supply which is cooking these components one at a time. and whats worse is you may have cooked the new part(s). I bought this handy power supply tester from newegg for like $12.00 it has led's on it that light up and let you know how the powersupply is working, even better it has an over volt light. Unfortunately some propriatary systems have it over volted to start with so it kinda throws you off track. Check for bad caps on the board, switch out the power supply and run mem test on the ram. And if all else fails try a processor (it pays to have a few parts towers sitting around for just such and ocassion) I once had a system do what you are talking about with the rebooting mess, and it turned out to be a bad PIII processor.

When that fails and you can't fix it. Gut the new components out of it, sell em on e-bay and blow the case away with the shotgun, and film it so I can watch.

good luck

 

Well first the cd-rom stopped working. I sounded like the cd wasn't being read. it would just click like something fell out of place. then the hard drive about a month later start clicking and not booting up. If I unplug both the hard drive and cd-rom. it boots and goes right to the screen that says can not find any OS on any disk. no fixed disks present. when I put the HD in it says cannot access HD. unable to find an operating system. I do believe thats whats it's suppose to do. If I start up the comp with the CD connected and the win98 in it. it brings up the boot from Hard drive or Cd-rom menu. The I can select begin win98 start. it starts up the install shows the blue screen and say press enter to install win98. when I hit enter it restarts. also I tried start up from win98 startup floppy. select with cd-rom support. switch to drive e: most of the time it restarts when I insert the win98 cd other times it dosen't I type setup. and it restarts. thats as far as I've gotten. the memory isn't bad cause it was just bought a few months ago as an upgrade. It a Compaq presario from 2000.

 

Any idea's

 

How large is the HD you are trying to install in this Win98 machine?

Try putting the CDROM on the secondary IDE controller by itself and the HD on the primary controller by itself.

The repeated reboots may be the result of a conflict in hardware or bad or improperly seated RAM. I would try reseating the RAM first. BE SURE YOUR PROPERLY GROUNDED.

 

Im sorry but looking at that qoute just makes me wanna say "Then why even post if you want us to assume that"

 

I understand that quote, because I use it often enough. The stock responce of "update your drivers" and other assorted basic knowledge is counterproductive. So stating this fact does give a starting point.

 

Exactly

 

700 MB one for now. 10GB if I can it booted.

The both on there own IDE already.

Will Do.