Is it my power supply?

[trekkerj]

I've got a Dell System. It has a 250 Watt power supply. I am having trouble with the dvd-r drive, and thought it might be power related. I was having trouble with some discs that freezes toward the end of the movie. I thought it might be the IDE cable, so I replaced it and it seems to fix it (I haven't had any problems about 6 discs later).

Here is some odd behavior that made me thought of the power supply. I have 3 HD's hooked up, so maybe it's too much:

1) Once in a while, i'd hit eject on the dvd drive, and the CD drive ejected instead. Very strange. This is actually what made me think of replacing the cable.

2) During a warm reboot only, my secondary IDE bus was reported as being empty of any drives by the BIOS. A cold shutdown and power on fixed this.

3) Using the same drive with a certain brand of generic dvd-r, it is difficult to get the drive to recognize it (maybe 40% of the time). Yet, plucking the drive and putting it into another machine yields 100% of the time.

I would appreciate any help while I figure out if I can transplant my ssytem into a standard ATX type tower case with a 350 or 400 watt power supply.

Thanks.

[theReal]

it also depends very much on your cpu and graphics adapter how much power you need.
My dad's computer is running just fine with a 250W PSU - three HD's, Athlon T-Bird 1000@1060, VIA KT133 chipset, Matrox Millenium G200, one CDrom, one 4x Burner. But I wouldn't dare to put in a graphics adapter with high power consumption (the G200 is pretty old and doesn't draw much current).

Check the voltages with Motherboard Monitor or a similar program, especially the +5V and +3.3V lines. If they dip down low (or if they are always low) you'll probably need a better PSU.
You can also check the power connectors first - they become lose quite often. I recently increased my 5V line from 4.84V to 5.05V just by repairing the mobo power-connector. I also fixed a problem with strange noises from one of my (four) HD's by fixing this connector (only clamped the metal connectors a bit so they wouldn't lose contact anymore)

[trekkerj]

It's a Pentium IV 1.5Ghz with a nVIDIA GEForce 2 video card.
I tried one of those voltage monitor programs, but maybe there are no sensors on the CPU since I wasn't getting any readings. Do my symptoms sound like a power problem? I am confused since replacing the IDE cable seems to let me make good DVDs, but it still has a problem with certain discs that it doesn't in another computer.

[sarahjh69]

i suspect you of using cheap media!

the pioneer dvd writer is VERY picky about media
bulkcrap and princo will almost always freeze
near the end of a movie........media errors

try datasafe dvd-rw, best media i have found
only 89p each at svp and bigpockets

[trekkerj]

However, when I put the drive back in, I still find strange occurences. When I do a warm reboot, I get a BIOS message stating that no HD can be found on Primary IDE 0, Primary IDE 1, Secondary IDE 0, or Secondary IDE 1. Cold shutdown fixes this. Would this be a power issue?

[Dezoris]

What Mobo do you have? Is it an intel i850 board?

Lets take a look, you have your IDE channels loaded, which is the first problem, do you have any IRQ conflicts?

In addition how many PCI slots do you have filled?
Do you have your burner on your primary or secondary IDE channel?

Give us the layout of how your drives are laid out on the channels and also your what your hardware setup is.

The Wilmette core on your 1.5 reuqires higher voltages than the Northwood, also if you are running the i850 it is a bit more power hungry, with your IDE spots filled and 3 HDs spinning, and a burner requiring excessive resources, your power supply may be failing to meet the demands.

IMO if this is your workstation I would make two immediate upgrades that will cost you probably 100-150$ at the most. For longevity this would allow for expandability and more HDs

1.)IDE controller card (Promise/Hi-point)
This will lighten the load on those IDE channels you can run 1 HD on your primary channel and your burner on your secondary so you won't have conflicts there. You put your storage drives on the IDE card and now it can utilize your PCI bandwidth which it won't touch.
I have run the card with 4 HDs and the HDs benchmarked showed slightly better performance over those on the IDE channels using HDtach 2.61
2.)Upgrade your power supply to 300+ watts.
I use the enermax FC line and they will take a total beating, 84$ will get you the pimp 435FC Enermax power supply at 430W, with fan control/dual fan and all the internals are copper, really a kick ass power supply. Can't afford that go with the 300w for 40$ same features less power.

[theReal]

... but don't buy one of the older Enermax models (for example EG365P, 350W). They were having serious 5V stability problems (those may or may not affect you, depending on the 5V usage of your board).

I think newer Enermax series are ok (like the FC series that Dezoris mentioned). Also good are Antec True Power and Leadman Powmax.

[Dezoris]

Originally posted by theReal
... but don't buy one of the older Enermax models (for example EG365P, 350W). They were having serious 5V stability problems (those may or may not affect you, depending on the 5V usage of your board).

I think newer Enermax series are ok (like the FC series that Dezoris mentioned). Also good are Antec True Power and Leadman Powmax.

There are so many options, and computer parts have really improved, there is not just one good brand anymore which is something we agree on don't exclude a company because you don't know the brand.

[sarahjh69]

LET ME SHOUT OUT LOUDER

Its a media problem!!!!!!!!!!!!
Boot up your pc without a crap dvd-r in the drive
and your drive will be detected properly....

ITS NOTHING TO DO WITH THE POWER SUPPLY OR MOBO
buy decent media!!!!!!!!!!!

bad media freeze at about the 3 gig point
rebooting with bad media in the drive will
cause all sorts of silly problems. Cos
windoze checks the drives on startup and is
not sure what to do when it finds bad media.

maybe when you put it in a different pc the working
temp of the burner was different and it could read the bad media.
i bet you left the side off!!

don't use princo/bulkcrap/vivistar and unbranded media
buy a couple of verbatim and burn em. Bet all your problems
are gone then!!!!

[trekkerj]

How would booting with certain media in a drive cause bootup problems? The drive is not part of the bootup sequence. More importantly, there isn't any media in the drive when I reboot.

I have a SIIG IDE add-on board, I suspect there is a hardware interrupt conflict occurring, but I can't figure out how to verify this or resolve it.

[theReal]

It could be many things that cause a strange behavior (and it doesn't sound in the first place like your PSU was to blame - only it might also be a weak point with 3HD's, so I'd check the voltages anyways).

With your drive (if it's not the media), try to hang it on IDE 1 instead of IDE 2 (some boards don't like DMA-DVD drives on IDE 2). If it's a slave drive, make it the master, if it's master already, make it a single drive. Whatever you can change, change it! Only one thing at a time, of course.

Can you update the firmware? If so, do it. I recently fixed a read speed problem with my Pioneer DVD Rom by updating the firmware. Although it looked like the drive was just crapping out, the new firmware fixed it...

[Dezoris]

When I do a warm reboot, I get a BIOS message stating that no HD can be found on Primary IDE 0, Primary IDE 1, Secondary IDE 0, or Secondary IDE 1.

Now what does that have to do with media, guess again, nothing.Originally posted by sarahjh69
LET ME SHOUT OUT LOUDER

Its a media problem!!!!!!!!!!!!
Boot up your pc without a crap dvd-r in the drive
and your drive will be detected properly....

ITS NOTHING TO DO WITH THE POWER SUPPLY OR MOBO
buy decent media!!!!!!!!!!!

bad media freeze at about the 3 gig point
rebooting with bad media in the drive will
cause all sorts of silly problems. Cos
windoze checks the drives on startup and is
not sure what to do when it finds bad media.

maybe when you put it in a different pc the working
temp of the burner was different and it could read the bad media.
i bet you left the side off!!

don't use princo/bulkcrap/vivistar and unbranded media
buy a couple of verbatim and burn em. Bet all your problems
are gone then!!!!

[xnakx]

I suggest trying the good old process of elimination.
boot your machine with minimal devices
then add devices untill you start seeing the problem.


remember it might not be just one thing it could be a combination of the devices giving you the problem.

and don't forget to look at the ever-overlooked BIOS battery!

XnakX