Strange - Possible motherboard problem?

[Slick5150]

A friend of mine was having problems with his computer, he said that Windows was crashing a lot and giving him error messages, so he decided to reinstall it. But when he tried that, it also gave him error messages, so he asked me to take a look at it.

Anyways, sure enough, when trying to install windows, it stops saying "(something).sys cannot be loaded. The Error Code is 7". Well, I checked into that, and thought it had something to do with the BIOS, or the RAM. So, I tried all of the following:
- Swapped out the RAM
- Flashed the BIOS
- Changed the battery on the motherboard

None of those solved the problem. So I thought maybe one of the primary hard drive may have something wrong with it (he has 2 HD's on the primary channel, 1 CD-RW on the secondary). So I remove the master HD, hook up the other one as master, turn the PC back on, and it freezes after the RAM check, and won't even let me get into the BIOS. I tried a few other ways of hooking it up (all the jumpers were correct and everything), and it turned out that the computer would not post or let me get to the BIOS unless the Hard drives and the CD-RW were hooked up the way they were before. If I put them back in that configuration, it worked (though didn't solve the original problem of Windows not installing), but otherwise, nothing.

Anyone have a clue what the problem(s) are here? Does this sound like something wrong with the motherboard?

Here's the specs on his computer as best as I can remember:
ECS K7S5A Motherboard (w/ latest BIOS now)
AMD Athlon XP 1900+
512mb RAM (1 stick is Crucial, I don't recall what the other was)
60GB Maxtor HD
30GB Western Digital HD
32X Lite-On CD-RW
GeForce 4 MX something
Hercules sound card

Any help would be appreciated.

 

[themightygeckoe]

I seem to recall several posts by people saying that the Ecs boards were not that stable but could be wrong.

I had a problem with mine locking up following the ram check after I swapped hard drives.

Make sure that you have set the secondary hard drive that you made the master into master mode using the jumper on the back or single mode if it is alone. If you are connecting the cd drive to that hard drive make sure that it's jumper is set to slave. I had some problems when I was running two masters without slaves on seperate IDE channels..It seemed to work when I set one as master and the other as slave on the same IDE channel. Also, for the new hard drive, it will have to have windows installed on it or it won't run.

I hope that that helps...

 

[Slick5150]

When moving the drives around, I made sure the jumpers were being set properly, so that wasn't the problem. I also understand that the other drive isn't going to boot without an OS installed, but as I stated, the computer wouldn't even post with that drive set as the master (and only) drive.

I'm thinking about just installing a new motherboard in his system and trying that out, unless anyone has any other ideas as to what could be wrong here?

 

[themightygeckoe]

I'm trying to remember what the problem was when Ihad a similar situation.

If the second hard drive is an older one, sometimes there is a different jumper setting for a single hard drive as opposed to a master.
Is the hard drive connected to the end of the ide cable as opposed to the middle?
Is the ide cable connected to IDE1?

Just random thoughts.

 

[Slick5150]

Yep. I made sure the jumper was set to single drive when appropriate, and it was connected to the end of the cable. That all definitely checked out.

I figure the problem with Windows refusing to install, and the strange behavior if I change the IDE configurations have to be related, I just don't know the cause. But I picked up a new Epox 8RDA+ motherboard for him today, and will install it tonight and hope for the best.

If that doesn't solve the problem, then I'm REALLY stumped.