Could really use some troubleshooting advice!

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unfaithfulsfan
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Could really use some troubleshooting advice!

Post by unfaithfulsfan »

I'm working on a Compaq Presario S4120WM. The only specs I know for sure, since it won't boot, are that it has a P4 CPU, 512 RAM and a 40 GB hdd with Win XP Home. Aside from a HIS Radeon X1650 Pro Video card and a LiteOn DVD burner, it's pretty much stock from the factory. (HP, unlike Dell, is not very forthcoming in listing the factory specs)

To the problem, the hard drive has failed diagnostics but still is good enough that I can image it to a new drive however, it won't boot to Windows. It gets to the desktop and then reboots. My master plan was to image the drive with Acronis then do a repair install on the new drive to correct any corrupted XP files.

When I boot to Acronis and try to clone the drive, it tells me only one drive is installed. So I went to BIOS and sure enough, the new drive isn't there. But BIOS will recognize the original drive. Here are the steps I've taken so far, none of which have solved the problem:

- Tried clearing CMOS, although since this board has no battery and no obvious CMOS jumper I had to guess as to which jumper it was. There is a jumper labelled "FSB" near the primary IDE port which is the only one on the board that resembles a CMOS jumper. So I tried that. Seemed to work but still no new HDD
-Tried auto-detecting HDDs but only orginal showed up
-Tried resetting CMOS defaults and running Auotdetect
-Tried jumpering the new drive to Master instead of cable select and booting only with it on the Master cable
-Tried the new drive on the Secondary IDE channel as both master and slave
-Tried 4 other known good "shop" drives

Am I missing something really obvious? I'm sitting here scratching my head and trying to think of anything else to try. ](*,)

Thanks in advance for any advice or suggestions!
Jack
"A payphone was ringing and it just about blew my mind,
when I picked it up & said 'Hello' this foot came through the line"
~Bob Dylan
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unfaithfulsfan
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Re: Could really use some troubleshooting advice!

Post by unfaithfulsfan »

OK, I'm retarded. Finally found CMOS battery. Thought I'd looked everywhere but it was lurking under the floppy cable. :toimonster:
"A payphone was ringing and it just about blew my mind,
when I picked it up & said 'Hello' this foot came through the line"
~Bob Dylan
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KnightRid
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Re: Could really use some troubleshooting advice!

Post by KnightRid »

unfaithfulsfan wrote:OK, I'm retarded. Finally found CMOS battery. Thought I'd looked everywhere but it was lurking under the floppy cable. :toimonster:
Did that work?

fsb should be for the front side bus speed - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Front_side_bus

Mike

Is the new hard drive formatted? Maybe throw it in a usb enclosure or stick it on another computer to see if you can read it and format it.
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DMB2000uk
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Re: Could really use some troubleshooting advice!

Post by DMB2000uk »

Has that sorted it?

Dan
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unfaithfulsfan
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Re: Could really use some troubleshooting advice!

Post by unfaithfulsfan »

Man, I feel like 47 different kinds of an idiot. In the immortal words of Lloyd Bridges in "Airplane," "I picked the wrong week to quit smoking"

The stupid power cable was bad. I was switching IDE cables like a madman. Not power cables. :oops:

Holy friojle.

Thanks for the quick response anyway, Mike!
"A payphone was ringing and it just about blew my mind,
when I picked it up & said 'Hello' this foot came through the line"
~Bob Dylan
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KnightRid
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Re: Could really use some troubleshooting advice!

Post by KnightRid »

Glad you figured it out!

Mike
Remember, I am opinionated and nothing I say or do reflects on anyone or anything else but me :finga:
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