Member Avatar for rwoelich

Hi, I've had a few varieties of this general problem for a while now but it's gotten to the point where I'm kind of at a standstill with it.

When I first built my computer everything worked fine. After about a year and a half (just recently), though, I've started to have problems with it. The biggest thing that would happen is that whenever I would try to install something big from CD, the computer would crash after a little while of copying files. It would then restart and boot back up. It was that way for a while, and then it got a little worse... to where when it would crash, the computer would lock up entirely (HD activity light solid on and monitor in standby) to where I would have to unplug it to get it to shut off. When I plugged it back in, sometimes it would boot back up and sometimes it would go back into that locked up state from before I unplugged it.

After a little bit, I noticed that the computer would lock up if I turned it on with a CD in the drive. It wouldn't even POST. When I took the CD out of the drive (generally I'd have to use a needle and manually open the drive to get the CD out), it would boot fine. I'd have no problems until I stuck a CD in the drive, at which time the computer would crash when the computer tried to run autoplay on it. I tried disabling autoplay but it didn't matter because the computer would crash any time anything tried to access the contents of the CD.

I got frustruated with this and did the smart thing (sarcasm :p )... I wasn't thinking, assumed it was an XP problem and wiped my hard drive so I could reinstall XP. Well, I never got XP back on the thing. Whenever I try to boot with a CD in, either the computer won't POST, it will POST but it will freeze when it's detecting the IDE drives, it will POST fine but it won't detect the CD drive at all, or it will (very rarely) make it past the POST with the CD drive detected. However, as soon as it tries to boot from the CD, it's over and the computer restarts. If I boot up without a CD in the drive, it will work perfectly fine. It will get to where it tries to boot from CD and say "Invalid system disk, please insert one and press enter" since there's nothing on my hard drive. When I put a CD in and hit enter, it will crash. Sometimes it will crash with a CD in before I hit enter. Very rarely will it actually start to boot from the CD. Windows XP setup will either crash at the "Setup is detecting your computer's hardware config", or it will load all of the various device drivers at the beginning, get to the first screen of the Windows setup, and then just crash. The only CD that I can sometimes use without crashing is a Windows 98 boot disk on CD, and that will only work if I choose to not load the CD drivers.

Things I have done to try to fix this:
Switched the CD drives (3 different ones)
Switched the IDE cables
Switched my RAM sticks out one by one
Tried a different hard drive
Reseated my processor and heatsink
Switched my graphics card
Removed other cards that aren't needed (i.e. sound card)
Bought a new motherboard and put it in (solved the system locking when it crashed)

I have no idea what is causing this. I've switched everything, it makes no sense. Why would it crash because a bootable CD is in the drive? When I had Windows installed, it wouldn't boot up if the CD in the drive was or wasn't bootable, it didn't matter. Now it seems to not care if the CD isn't bootable. I put a non-bootable CD in when it gave the "Invalid system disk" error, and when I hit enter it didn't crash, just told me again the disk was invalid.

Has anyone heard of this happening before? And more importantly, what's causing it and how do I fix it? O.o

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Dani AI

Generated

Short version tied to the thread: raised temperature as a possibility and sensibly asked for evidence — has measured temps and already done a lot of part swapping, so overheating and a single bad drive are unlikely. The most consistent, testable causes left are power delivery (PSU or drive power feed), IDE/master‑slave/jumper or BIOS enumeration issues, and a case or connector short that only shows up when the CD drive is accessed.

Practical next steps (in order, document each result):

  • Swap in a known‑good PSU or power the optical drive from a different Molex/bench supply. A failing PSU or a single overloaded rail can cause resets when a drive spins up even if everything else appears to work.
  • Power the drive from a different Molex connector and try the drive outside the case on the bench. That rules out a bad connector, loose ground, or short from the drive bay.
  • Force fixed jumper settings on the drive (master or slave), avoid cable‑select, and try the drive on the opposite IDE channel. Some BIOSes hang on certain device combinations; this isolates the controller vs. drive behavior.
  • Clear CMOS and load BIOS defaults. If available, change the IDE mode (try disabling DMA / switch to PIO or compatibility) or increase drive detection timeout. Only update BIOS after you can reproduce the problem reliably and you have the board vendor instructions.
  • Try booting the same media via an external USB optical/IDE‑to‑USB adapter or a USB stick. If USB boot works but IDE/CD still causes resets, the problem is almost certainly power/IDE controller related rather than the CD image.

Further diagnostics: run a small hardware toolset (for example MemTest86 or a boot utility like the Ultimate Boot CD) to stress RAM and rule out intermittent memory/cpu faults. If the PSU swap and bench testing don’t help, the remaining likely causes are a marginal PSU or subtle motherboard fault; record voltages and swap the PSU before investing in more parts.

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Member Avatar for achyut

Your main problem is the tempreture of your pc. U have to use pc in cool place so that u can run pc more bater

Member Avatar for frrossk

Your main problem is the tempreture of your pc. U have to use pc in cool place so that u can run pc more bater

How did you get to this conclusion??

Member Avatar for rwoelich

Yeah, I would be a little curious as to that too. While troubleshooting, I've had the case cracked open with a really big fan clipped to a nearby piece of furniture that helps cool the entire motherboard. My CPU temperature never hits more than 98°F while the computer is idle. It's a P4 so it can hit around 70°C without any major problems. The rest of the board is fine. I don't think it's an overheating problem, I took that into account when troubleshooting it.

Thanks for the replies so far, BTW.

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