really would appreciate some help on this.

my computer is 2 years old and has an Intel P4 lga 775 on a foxconn 865PE7AF-S ATX motherboard.

I went to turn the computer on, and did not boot.
on investigation i found that the CPU fan runs, the on led on the Front of the case is lit and the internal fans run.

however, the monitor does not come off standby, the CD ROM and writer drives wont eject, the pair of hard drives (IDE) are inactive.

i suspected a power supply fault.

however, the cooling fans run off the red power wire and the hard drive cooling fans run off the yellow wire.
so i was confused as to why there being power i could not eject the drives of no action on hard drives.

just to be sure i swapped the power supply and it made no difference.

now i am scratching my head ??????

any assistance would be greatly welcomed

many thanks

Danny

Had another little look inside.

decided to remove everything and back to basic.

pressed the power button, and this time the CD / DVD drives powered up and the hard drives were active.

as soon as either IDE ribbon cable from either IDE channel to either hard drives or roms were connected this stopped that unit from working.

any ideas ?

thanks Danny

I would suspect a hairline crack in your motherboard ...

It seems to be a physical fault in the system, causing a short whenever the hard drive cables are connected or the ram is connected ...

If there is no support directly under the motherboard close enough to the RAM slots or the cable connectors on the motherboard and you press too hard to connect them, you can crack the motherboard, causing intermittent faults such as what you are experiencing ... test the RAM modules and hard drives + cables with a known good system to determine where the fault actually lies, and then replace only the faulty components.

The hard drives (master/slave) both run, and so do both rom drives (dvd rom / writer) when the ide's are disconnected.

as soon as any of the drives are connected via the ide ribbon cable that drive stops. (hard drive stops spinning / dvd rom wont eject)

soon as the ide cable is removed (any which drive, any combination of any channel) the power returns to that drive.

would replacing the mother board be sure to rectify the fault ?

Danny

Have tried Just swaping the ribbion cable? Hard to think it would be bad. But cheaper than a mother board. However the board may be at falt.

well, i have swapped them about, but nothing, and would be strange for both of the cables to fail at the same time.

i have just got home with a new motherboard and had to get the new ddr2 ram to fit,

so fingers crossed.

danny

Hi danny.s

I had this problem once

I'm very very impatient when my system doesn't work but I basically did everything you did, swapped the cables, put a stack of my 'defective' parts into another PC and they worked, until I replaced the motherboard, which worked. In the end it was my motherboard, it's one of the most expensive parts to replace and I hope you come right with the new board you have