strange problem..

[sirtoby]

ok.. so this one day the power went out.. when I started up the computer again the light on my dvd-rom was lit and it wouldn't go past the ide detection in the POST..

I switched around some cables and got it to boot up..

Now the other day, it did the same thing again... power went out, dvd light lit at startup.. this time I didn't bother switching around cables.. took a long time before it worked last time and I had more important things to do.. so I just unplugged the molex and the ide cable and booted..

Now today I just plugged the cable back in and booted up.. and it works..

Now what's up with this?

[danrok]

Intermitant boot failures are often caused by one or more faulty drives.

If one of your drives is approaching the end of it's useful life it may well fail occasionaly before giving up the ghost completely.

If you don't experience any problems when the DVD drive is completely disconnected, it would be fair to assume that the DVD drive is at fault.

Swap it over with another and see what happens, or try the DVD drive in another machine.