primary ide failure

The primary ide on an A7V333 motherboard on my sons computer seems to have failed. I got a message saying that the hard drive was in imminent danger of failing a few days ago, then the thing wouldnt boot. I tried another couple of hard drives I knew were working but they wouldnt boot either. I swopped the original hard drive over to the secondary ide and now everything works fine. Is the secondary ide likely to go as well? Anyone know whats happened?
Steve

 

Go into Device Manager and remove the primary IDE controller and Reboot. Windows will put it back. If that doesn't work, you may be looking at mobo failure.

 

thanks I'll try that. Also, the computer now switches itself back on when switched off and the only way round it is to cut the power!

 

Check in the BIOS settings (CMOS) for features like "Wake on LAN ", "Wake on ring (modem) ", "Wake on alarm ", etc. Disable them.

Matt

 

uninstalling and reinstalling the primary ide seems to have worked, thanks, but the computer still turns itself back on although the monitor doesnt fire up. I have a bit of a problem sometimes with the power switch sticking but that doesnt seem to be it. I guess I could disconnect the switch and see if it still happens?

 

You have a sticking power switch, you could be frying your whole computer.

If you have an ATX board and want to baby things, just make the reset switch the main power switch.

 

Steve

What OS?

Did you try plugging your box into the wall outlet and eliminate the surge suppressor?

Mine did the power-back-on thing for awhile. I think I fixed it by doing an XP repair.

 

Does the reset switch do anything other than momentarily cut the power? My Operating system is XP.

 

The reset switch only resets your processor causing a reboot. It has nothing to do with the power.

What happens when you shut down properly? (Start>Turn Off Computer>Turn Off)

 

when I shut down properly one of the fans (i think the system fan) turns on again. I cant check at the moment cos it wont turn on at all. I tried swopping over the power and reset switch but that didnt work. I have another tower unit so im going to use that instead and see if it works.