Motherboard not seeing drives.

[tarkus]

Hey, all

First time posting here, so please bear with me.....

Specs: FIC VA-503+ , BIOS Rev. 4333,
Motherboard Rev. 1.2A
ANTEC 300W AT p/s
AMD K-6/2 400MHz
Kington 256Mb SDRAM PC100
Visiontek TNT2 AGP card, 16Mb
Creative Soundblaster 16 (ISA)
Netgear FA311 NIC (PCI)

Western Digital WD400BB 40Gb HD on primary ide channel, master.

Philips PCRW804K CD-RW on secondary ide channel, master.

Installed HD about 2 years ago along w/cd-rw. Installed AGP about 1 1/2 yrs ago w/new PS. Box had been running fine for a long time.
Picked up a virus, which was cleaned.
Ran daily virus checks w/updated virus files. Running ok, then started locking up. Got data corruption on HD, had to wipe it. Wrote zeros to drive, drive tested ok. Motherboard fails to see either drive intermittently. Sometimes no HD, sometimes no CDRW, sometimes neither. Sometimes HD shows as corrupted or no OS installed.
Checked jumpers, cables, changed cables, reseated memory. Still happens.

Is the HD controller on the MB shot?
I tried using a Promise controller card, and that seems to allow the HD to work, but it's not my first choice.

Any advise welcome.

Tarkus

[Peter M]

Sounds more like a dying power supply.

[tarkus]

Originally posted by Peter M
Sounds more like a dying power supply.

Had that thought as well. How do I check a power supply? Are there other symptoms?

[rmanet]

that mobo (and system) is alot older than than the Antec PSU - since most of the problems seem to be related to the HDD I'd suspect the IDE controller but who knows - only way to check either is to buy a PSU or a Promise card (you can get your hands on a Promise card pretty cheap)

I would think about maybe building a new system - wouldn't cost much more and why keep that old system alive when for a few bucks you could see a huge improvement - you could do a barebones and use all your existing components :t