XP won't start after installing 2nd hard drive

[Lambert Simnel]

Hi,

I bought a Western Digital WD1600BB to act as a second hard drive on an old PC. I installed it as a slave on my primary IDE circuit (motherboard Asus A7V333, master drive an IBM/Hitachi 80GB ICL35L080AVVA07-0). XP recognised the device, and I was able to allocate and format the new drive, and give it a drive letter.

However, when I now try to start up my PC, while the BIOS recognises the master and slave hard drives correctly, XP fails with a Blue Screen of Death and an INTERNAL_POWER_ERROR message. If I unplug the WD1600BB, then the PC starts up fine. If I start XP up in safe mode, then I can see the new drive and write files to it. (In this case Device Manager says that the hard drive is working fine.) The drivers associated with both hard drives are the standard Microsoft ones from 2001. Why should the WD1600BB cause XP to fail to start up except in safe mode ?

Any help is greatly appreciated.

[LeftyAce]

If you have an 80 wire IDE cable, you should jumper both drives to Cable Select (not master/slave). 80 wire cables have thinner ridges, and the connector on the motherboard end is a different color from the other two.

[Panama Red]

From a google search, it seems this type of error is most often related to a defective device connected via usb or a usb overload caused by using an unpowered usb hub/splitter. What external devices do you have connected? Any wireless kbd or mouse? Is your XP fully updated including SP2?

[Lambert Simnel]

Hi Lefty. Switching both devices to be CS still gets the same error message (the cable is indeed an 80 wire IDE one). I've tried playing around a bit with the jumper settings, but always aiming for the old drive to be master and the new one to be slave, regardless of whether I'm trying to achieve it just be cable positioning, Master & Slave settings, or Master with Slave & Slave settings. The two alternatives I get are that either the system ignores the slave and boots up, or the Bios sees both drives (correctly allocated to master and slave) and I get the BSOD with its INTERNAL_POWER_ERROR.


Panama, I'm on XP SP1 on the PC in question - while I have another running SP2, I'd heard too many horror stories about upgrading from SP1 to SP2 to try it (and I hadn't had a need, either). Western Digital have just come back suggesting upgrading to SP2 as well, so perhaps I should give it a shot. In terms of other USB devices, I have a USB-Ethernet device, and a USB 802.11g wireless client (both Belkin). I tried without the wireless device being present, but it made no difference. The USB to Ethernet connector has been there for years, and hasn't exhibited any problems before. No wireless kbd or mouse. I will try rebooting without either of the USB devices, but I'm not too hopeful.

Thanks to both of you for your responses.

[LeftyAce]

Even though the jumpering didn't fix it, leave them both on CS; you'll suffer a speed decrease otherwise (once we get them both working, that is :-)

Do upgrade to SP2; the issues surrounding it were short lived. If you're really worried, back up your important data just in case, but I've done more SP2 upgrades than I can remember, and have had no issues.

[Panama Red]

Just another thought, what are the specs on your power supply - brand/watts? Are there enough 4 pin power connectors to allow you to connect each hdd to a separate power cable from the psu? If not, maybe temporarily disconnect the cd drives and use that branch to connect to the second hdd. This may help isolate whether the problem is a mobo/ide circuit load issue or a psu issue.

[Lambert Simnel]

Hmm, weird.

I have a PowerStar (?) PSU which claims to be good up to 430W. There are two 12V cables coming out from it, one which was serving a CD drive, a DVD drive and a virtually unused 3.5" floppy drive. The second 12V supply line went to both hard drives and to a PCI card used for providing extra firewire and USB ports.

I tried rearranging the power lines so that only the two hard drives were powered, and on separate lines. This worked! I added the CD drive and DVD drive back in, and this still booted up OK, recognising everything. To confirm that the firewire card and floppy requirements were pushing the PC over some threshold, I added them in, and, indeed, the BSOD re-appeared.

That seemed to be that. I detached the firewire card and the floppy drive again, and, being content to live without them as I don't use either (they seemed like a good idea when I ordered the PC years ago) thought that I had a workable config. I rebooted, but got the BSOD. This was the same configuration which had worked 10 minutes earlier! I took the DVD drive off the power supply, and still it wouldn't boot.

I went back to having only the two hard drives being powered, and this again worked. I then reinstated the CD and DVD drives, and this time it booted successfully.

So I'm confused. It certainly seems that I'm close to the limit of what my power supply can provide (though only at the point when XP boots up - it's fine when the system first starts up and the BIOS recognises everything). But why one particular config of 2 hard drives + CD and DVD drives should work, fail and then work again, apparently based on whether the previous config was successful or not (?), is just beyond me.

Does SP2 offer better / more intelligent power management at boot up ?

Is there a utility I can grab which will show me what the power usage is of each of my devices (principally at boot up) ?

Is 430W really as low powered as it seems to be here ? I replaced my (smoking) 250W power supply last year, and that had managed to drive a configuration of CD+DVD+floppy+firewire card + 1 hard drive, though I guess at that point I didn't have the wireless USB connection, and I had GeForce4 Ti4200 video card then , instead of a FX5500.

Thinking as I type, I don't really need both network connections - the wireless one was added as a proof of concept before moving the PCs around as part of the wife's plans for redecorating and refurnishing the room in question. Now it's up and running, I can forgo the ethernet one - but is that likely to be making much of a power drain ?

[minsonngo]

I think your PSU is just overloaded or dying. PowerStar sounds like a off brand one too.

You need to get a QUALITY PSU and you should be up and running fine.


Something like this will serve you well:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16817104953

or

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16817104954

[Lambert Simnel]

New decent PSU bought, installed, and all is well (well, so far... )

Thanks to all for you help & comments. I do appreciate it.

[minsonngo]

Good... glad you got it working now!

[Lambert Simnel]

Argh.

I spoke too soon. everything fine for the first two boot ups, and the the BSOD and power error returned.

Had already upgraded to SP2, and have tried having the hard drives on separate 12V cables.

Corresponding with Western Digital now - I think the only options left are either there's a problem with the hard drive itself, or that the Asus A7V333 motherboard is irredeemably flaky (which is quite a reasonable possibility, as it never liked having two different manufacturers memory in the first 2 Dimm slots).

I think we can remove the PSU from the equation, at least. Any other thoughts, anyone ?

[Cricket]

What brand is the new power supply?



Cricket

[Lambert Simnel]

The new PSU is an Arctic 600W (possibly a rebadged Jeantech ?). Haven't seen anything negative about these, and it feels and looks like a much better quality piece of kit that the PowerStar one.

Anyway, Western Digital suggested that I should get the hard drive replaced, the online retailer agreed, and a new one duly arrived.

Connected it up, and it was immediately recognised by the bios. Into XP, Disk Management, Initialise, Create Partition and Format. Write a file to the new disk, and retrieve it. All is well.

Next reboot, and the INTERNAL_POWER_ERROR message and the associated Blue Screen of Death returned.

I am honestly at my wits end with this one. The fact that I can get as far as formatting the disk suggests that the jumper settings and basic connection are fine. The new hard disk is on a separate 12V output from the PSU.

All I can imagine is that this is another dodgy aspect of my Asus A7V333 motherboard, in which case I'm probably stuffed, and can just shove my new hard drive up on eBay.

Any ideas, folks ?

PS Sorry for late reply - was out of the country, and then had to wait for the drive to be replaced.

[Lambert Simnel]

Additional information...

The error data is 0x000000A0 (0x00000101, 0x00000007, 0xF79C17A4, 0x00000000).

Any help, anyone ?

[Panama Red]

Try either of these MS KB solutions.

http://support.microsoft.com/search/...=20&1033comm=1

[Lambert Simnel]

Thanks for the reply, Panama.

The two Microsoft KB articles aren't much help though. The first one is about a keyboard issue on hibernate - my issue is on bootup, and has different parameters in the error message. The keyboard is a very plain, vanilla UK keyboard which came with the PC 5 years ago (none of yer fancy bluetooth or wireless stuff here )

The second again talks about hibernation, and advises updating to the latest XP service pack (which I have already). It also points towards another article on internal_power_error relating to hibernation (Q331958), which has a fix attached - I've tried applying this, but XP quite rightly informs me that I'm on a later service pack and don't need this fix.

I guess I could try swapping a different keyboard in - what have I got to lose ?