is the machine locking up completely (requiring a reboot), or is it just intermitent? and when it locks up, does it reboot on it’s own, or…?
just curious, because for a while, i was using a client’s machine where i’d get similar lockups(and reboots) with the machine, and it turned out the guy had installed his dvd writer plugged into one of those 3rd-party ide controllers (a promise card, i believe). moving the drive to one of the ide connectors on the motherboard (a non-RAID ide connector) fixed the problem.
probably not the same situation, but what the heck, figured i’d throw it out there.
Complete lockup. Just freezes mid-mouse move, usually while on the Internet, but sometimes on its own when I’m not even using the machine. I have to do a hard reboot to get it back up and running.
I’m beginning to suspect the power supply. I’ve disconnected the drive and no lockups yet. A glance in the case shows me it’s a 300W, which I thought should be enough as I removed the other CDrom drive. Do dvd-burners take that much more power?
Anyway, thanks for bothering with this, guys. As I said before, as far as burning goes, the drive works very well.
In seeking to diagnose whether what I have on my hands is a power problem I disconnected the dvd-burner. But I only disconnected the IDE cable, not the power cable.
Dork.
Still, it hasn’t locked up, so more troubleshooting ahead. Woo. Hoo.
Reinstalling XP is beginning to look better all the time. Better yet, an all new mobo and CPU! Yeah, that’s the ticket.
Dork.
“In a way, he’s such a clueless dork, he’s almost kinda cool.”
Thanks Ranulf. Don’t think it’s PS. I used the calculator and I’m way below. Plus…
Weekly update on my dvd burner/XP blues:
I tried a couple things. Replaced the IDE cable in case it was bad. And in the meantime found I had connected the “digital out” or “SPDIF” cable as well as the Analog Out cable. I thought having both of them connected at once might be the problem.
Try as I might, I’ve had little luck figuring out wtf SPDIF is all about. I get all kinds of definitions on Google and in my OReilly book, but little about the nuts and bolts of how SPDIF is used and what conflicts might result. Grrrr.
Anyway, changing the IDE cable and disconnecting the SPDIF cable resulted in a week totally free of freeze activity…YAY!
Then, after about a week of peace, freezing continued.
