Question.

[uA - 1905]

I am in the US and A for college, having spent most of my life in Turkey. I'm thinking of bringing my computer over here. The problem is with the voltage. Would a simple adapter do, or would it be risky? I don't want the machine to fry, I paid a lot for it and it has all the quad core business going on with it. Besides I am sick and tired of my laptop's vista freezing up all the time, and the pc back home is xp.

Appreciated. :hamster:

[I.N Extasy]

Bring your computer to the US and then buy another PSU?

[cyberskull]

Why don't buy a simple power adapter? it's cheap and a great solution!

[Dundon's]

I've a question.

Spent the whole night trying to sort out a new build PC that my brother just put together a few days ago. The problem is coming from the HDD/Sata connection as fair as I know, everything is new but it's having serious trouble installing windows 7 and it basically either hangs up or fails.

We did manage to get a copy installed (took over an hour) but the system isn't shutting down and booting up without errors and most of the time when you go into the BIOS it's not even seeing the HDD but sometimes it does :/ Also when we're trying to install it the option to format the HDD is greyed out and also crashes when you try to format a partition.

We tried the HDD in another PC and it worked fine, we also installed another HDD with a running copying of Windows belong to my other brother into the PC in question and it worked fine aswell.

Somehow it seems there's a breakdown with the New PC's Mobo and HDD while at the same time both parts work fine when separated.

Any ideas?

[Usul]

It's confusing that the motherboard and the HDD work well when each is connected to another motherboard and HDD. It doesn't make sense.

Recently I had a similar problem, with windows not getting installed. It turned out to be the RAM.

[Dundon's]

It broke our melt the other night, so fucking confusing that something can work one minute then fail a few attempts later. You would be inclined to think something was faulty but when everything is brand new out of a box and works fine using other components it tends to rule that out.

We had gone down the road of desparation and tried updating the Sata 6 drivers on the board, even done a BIOS update but that still didn't fix it. I got word from my Mothers house this morning that the PC is running fine now for some reason but I can't confirm if it's still crashing occasionally.

It should of been straight forward, I know this much as I just slapped my own PC together recently without any of these issues. These things are made and setup in a way that they don't need configuration to detect each other.

Does anyone know if it could be something to do with setting the OS to Master? I read about this but couldn't find anything in the BIOS menu that read Master, the only thing I could do was set the HDD in the Sata connection 1 port and that's where it sits now but I did try all the other ports at one stage.

The other thing I messed with was changing the drive to IDE from AHCI, that was a slower install and crashed aswell, set everything back to default in the end and I think that's where things stand now. Default settings and mounted in Sata port 1.

Usul, resetting the CMOS on the mobo should sort out any dodgy ram configurations or pre post errors taken that the part isn't faulty or damaged.

[Sweey]

Master and Slave was for IDE drives not SATA ones. It also included Primary and Secondary. I don't miss that.

If you've tried multiple SATA ports, different cables, different drives and different motherboards and only have an issue with this one combination of hard drive and motherboard than I'm not sure what the problem is - unless the motherboard is particularly old and the drive particularly new. It could be to do with the settings of the SATA ports on the motherboard (set to 6gbps for a 3gbps drive) or something similar to that.

[Dundon's]

Thanks Sweey I'll phone him later on and ask him to try that. I didn't fully understand the whole Master/Slave and IDE affair as this is all brand new to me but now at least we can rule that out.

The motherboard is an Asus M5A78L-M LX V2, don't remember seeing anything that left us change the Sata port to 6gbps like you suggested but I'll mention that now aswell.

The last I heard there a while ago is that the system is running fine and booting up most of the time only for the random crashes.

[Sweey]

I don't think this will help you at all but posting it anyway:

http://www.tomshardware.com/forum/26855-63-hard-drive-driver-installed-find

[Dundon's]

I'll be talking to the lads in a while out in the house and I'll double check that the cables are all replaced just in the case that it's down to one of them been dodgy. The PSU is modular so that shouldn't be a problem and my other brother has a spare Sata cable.

That site you posted more or less said what we'd been talking about already but no harm in getting other opinions. If it's a thing them cables are dodgy I'm going to crack but everything is pointing to them and the fuckers are brand new.

[Dundon's]

Does anyone know the name of that launch tool bar that came with Vista that used to sit onto of the page and if I can get it to work on Win7?

My desktop is packed out and I need some order.:folarm:

[Sweey]

Eh?

I use the Quick Launch bar to keep my desktop tidy. Pretty sure that was "removed" in Vista though - takes about 60 seconds to get it back though.

[Dundon's]

I've a question.

Spent the whole night trying to sort out a new build PC that my brother just put together a few days ago. The problem is coming from the HDD/Sata connection as fair as I know, everything is new but it's having serious trouble installing windows 7 and it basically either hangs up or fails.

We did manage to get a copy installed (took over an hour) but the system isn't shutting down and booting up without errors and most of the time when you go into the BIOS it's not even seeing the HDD but sometimes it does :/ Also when we're trying to install it the option to format the HDD is greyed out and also crashes when you try to format a partition.

We tried the HDD in another PC and it worked fine, we also installed another HDD with a running copying of Windows belong to my other brother into the PC in question and it worked fine aswell.

Somehow it seems there's a breakdown with the New PC's Mobo and HDD while at the same time both parts work fine when separated.

Any ideas?

This problem ended up been the Sata cable believe it or not and despite it been brand spanky new. The funny side is that he had received 2 new cables with his ASUS board but never found them in the box until after he had ordered a new (dodgy one) from Amazon.

Wasn't until a week later then and "after" we replaced the cable (one he waited a week for and faulty) with a known working one from another machine that my mother actually discovered the 2 new ones when she went to throw out the box. :laugh:

[Sweey]

Master and Slave was for IDE drives not SATA ones. It also included Primary and Secondary. I don't miss that.

If you've tried multiple SATA ports, different cables, different drives and different motherboards and only have an issue with this one combination of hard drive and motherboard than I'm not sure what the problem is - unless the motherboard is particularly old and the drive particularly new. It could be to do with the settings of the SATA ports on the motherboard (set to 6gbps for a 3gbps drive) or something similar to that.

:smug: