Uh oh.... dead USB or motherboard?

[Adcadet]

Last night my wife plugged in a USB thumb drive into my keyboard/USB hub to print something. The computer (WinXP) detected it, and my wife clicked on the "open in folder view" icon. It didn't pop up, but the computer made a long beep noise through the internal speaker. I came over, and tried to open "my computer" but the machine just froze. I unplugged the thumb drive, which seemed to be partly plugged in. I tried to reboot the machine, but it wouldn't boot up. I fought with it, then finally gave up and went to bed.

Today, I disabled all IDE stuff (my main drive is a SCSI drive), disabled the USB ports and USB legacy support, and plugged the keyboard into the PS2 port, leaving the mouse unplugged. It booted fine. Then I enabled part after part, until finally it was working fine with all IDE drives enabled, USB ports enabled, legacy USB support, and the keyboard and mouse plugged into the USB port. So all was good, right. No.....

After letting the computer finish booting, the computer gave me a delayed write error to D:/$MFT (I use the D drive for swap). Then the computer gave a long beep and froze. Now it won't boot up no matter what I turn off in the BIOS. It boot to the SCSI screen (for my Adaptec SCSI card), but then stops there.


So.....is this a pretty clear case of a bad motherboard? Is it possible that plugging in a USB device may have killed the motherboard?

Ahhh. Why now? My car just died on Wednesday, and now it looks like my main computer is dead too? And just two weeks ago I had to replace my laptop's HD. Can somebody email me some good karma?

Thank all.

 

[Mercutio]

From your description it sounds like Mr. Thumb Drive did something very, very bad.

You need to strip things down to bare. Pull all your cards. Disable everything. Use a PCI video card if you have one. PS/2 keyboard.

If it doesn't boot like that, well, you probably wanted to upgrade anyway.

 

[Buck]

As Mercutio said, and clear the CMOS. Also, disconnect all ATA/ATAPI/EIDE devices and boot to a floppy diskette.

 

[Adcadet]

arrrr....

On the way home I was mentally preparing to remove all my PCI cards and do a thourough troubleshooting. But I thought I'd see if I could get lucky... I get home, turn on the computer, and it boots into Windows. The mouse was not plugged in, and USB was disabled in the BIOS. I hit CTL-ALT-DEL to see how things were running, but nothing came up. I hit the "My Computer" button on my keyboard, and the "My Computer" window opened by there was nothing in it. I hit the "calculator" button, but the Windows calculator didn't come up. I plugged the mouse in the PS2 port, it light up, but didn't work (not sure if this last part is normal).

I shut the computer down and restarted it, it checked one of my drives for consistency, then booted up. Everything seems to work. I can browse my drives, use IE, the calculator works, etc.

Shut down the computer, enter the BIOS, and discover that all my IDE ports are reported as disabled ("none"). I enable them and USB (leaving the legacy BIOS support off) and make sure nothings plugged into the USB ports. The computer makes it past the SCSI screen, beeps, and the screen is black (monitor light is green).

I opened the case, removed the sound and LAN card, leaving just the vid card and SCSI adaptor. I reset the CMOS. Booted, SCSI card seemed to fail finding the third HD (it will occasionally do this, although I can use the drive...I assume the computer just moves on to the next stage before it can tell me all the details). Windows came up and checked that drive for consistency (same drive as it checked before). The computer seemed normal, and I shut it down.

Started the computer, the SCSI card does it's thing, then I entered the BIOS. Even though I had just seen the computer and all the IDE drives, it lists all the IDE stuff as "none." WTF? I set all IDE channels to "auto" and reboot. The computer starts starts booting Windows, and checks Drive E for errors (again!) - none found. Windows loads, and looks OK. The computer seems a bit sluggish, but perhaps that's just because I'm paying more attention to it. I plug in my USB burner with a NOLF2 disk, and it pops up. Hmm.... maybe it's the keyboard and/or mouse that's bad....unplug keyboard and mouse, plug mouse into keyboard, and plug keyboard into the other USB port. Keyboard and mouse work.


HUH?????

 

[Adcadet]

So, the thing seems to work without the LAN or sound card. But I don't believe it, so I reboot the computer to prove to myself that it couldn't be either of these two PCI cards. I mean, have you ever heard of a Creative SB Live card causing problems

Computer boots, warning me that it can't find the keyboard (hmm...perhaps I should enable USB legacy support). The thing boots anyway. It checks Drive E for errors (again!), doesn't find any, and finishes booting.

Shut down computer, plug the keyboard's PS2 plug into the computer (while leaving the USB cable in just to see what will happen - nothing magical that I could see) and enable legacy USB support, leaving the two PCI cards out. Windows boots, checks E: (why?), then boots up. Seems normal. I shut it down.

So perhaps it is the sound or LAN card that's giving me problems.

 

[Adcadet]

I plugged in the LAN card (leaving the sound card out), and booted up. Again, it checks drive E: (???) and finishes booting. IE and Moz work. I tell Norton Disk Doctor to scan E:. It says that The partition table, file structures, indexes, and security descriptors are OK, and it skipped file data and suface test. I shut the computer down.

Pop the SB Live card in. Computer boots ups, again checking E:

***Intermission***
So my car's died last week. And this week some buy rear-ends me on the highway and then speeds off. I call the highway patrol and explain what happens. The officer on the case says that the plate number I gave him is registered to a red car, not the brown car I saw. Man it's hard to read plates in a rear view mirror.

***/Intermission***

So the computer booted up. It plays MP3s. It surfs the web.

Whatever the problem is/was, the damn thing seems to work for now. Grrrrr

 

[Buck]

Get a trailer hitch for your car. The next time someone rear-ends you, you'll leave a nice mark on the front of their car.

 

[Adcadet]

my old (now dead) car did. I had my wife's new/used car. If it had been my old junker I wouldn't have cared, but it's HER car. The bastard didn't even pull over.

 

[blakerwry]

I would email you some charma, but I think that's a little like faxing you paper....