Possible IDE Controller Issue? Boot issues.

Recently I offered to help the owner of the Curves center that I workout at help fix their computer. It's been down for several weeks and I figured I couldn't hurt it anymore.

Since it's not my computer, I don't have ALL the details, but here's what I've done and what I do know.

One thing I know about it is WinXP. I will post more details as they become available though.

I attempted to power on the computer. Seemed to boot fine at first, but it'll hang on the WinXP boot screen and eventually restart.

Upon trying to boot in safe mood, it will hang on loading IPVMON.sys, and eventually restart itself only to repeat this again. (I have tried safe mode, safe mode with networking, safe mode command prompt, last known good configuration and start windows normally. All have same symptoms.)

I am able to get to the BIOS. Upon retrieving my copy of WinXP Pro(bootable), I attempted to change the BIOS settings to boot in sequence CDROM, Floppy, HDD. This failed, and the computer DID NOT boot from the CD. I then changed each boot sequence device to CDROM. The computer still tried to boot from the floppy and HDD, but not the CDROM.

The CDROM has power, and cable connections are correct. I can see the light come on, and hear the drive spinning the disk. I have also tried using a completely different CDROM drive, and a different cable. None of these things helped the situation.

Upon retrievng a WinXP (single disk) floppy boot disk and a Win98 boot disk (with CDROM support) I attempted to boot the computer this way. I tried both boot disks. The computer WILL boot up from the boot disk and load the CD Drivers. Both disks responded the same way. After boot, I was unable to use the CD ROM drive (new or old drive, new and old cables). I was able to get to my CD Drive, but if I tried to access the disk, I received message:
CDR101 Not Ready
Abort Retry Fail?
This message was consistant with any way I tried to access the disk, using any series of commands (setup.exe, dir).

Lastly, in an attempt to reset the computer to an original condition, I removed the CMOS battery and replaced it. When attempting to boot from the HDD, I was able to see an error for a split second. When the WinXP boot screen was showing, right before teh computer restarted, I was able to see the bad blue screen of death ("fatal exception"). But I only know that from teh color of the screen, it flashes to quickly to make out what is says.

After telling this all to a colleague, he said it could be a bad IDE controller? I'm willing to try anything at this point.

(Right now I'm planning on at least trying to put the drive in my computer as a slave and removed important data if I can. Then reformat if I'm able to use the computer enough to do that.)

Any ideas on what could be causing this problem? Any help, suggestions, or tips would be much appreciated. As I'm pretty much at a loss now and do not know where to go next.

 

What model and brand is the PC?

 

Thanks guys....I'll try some more trouble shooting and see what I can do.

As for the make of the computer. It's probably the oddest computer I've ever seen. It's some model that Curves must buy. I didn't pay much attention to it. (I just always build my own...)

 

i agree with TimW. With everything removed as TimW suggested, the first series of beep codes should be the complaint that the video card is missing. So replace this first and see how much further you progress again noting the beep codes (do you know what the bios is?) and any other symptoms.

Good luck.