Hi,
I rebuilt my computer a week or two ago. I added a 15gb IDE hard drive to my girlfrind's old motherboard and processor, then added my old 500GB IDE hard drivemy AGP graphics card, firewire PCI card, RAM, and a new SATA hard drive which is attached to a PCI RAID controller.

I installed windows on the 15gb drive, and managed to get most things up and running properly, but was having problems with the internet. Everything else was working fine.

I managed to solve the internet problem, but then whilst surfing the internet my computer froze. I restarted it, but then it repeatedly froze at the windows start-up screen and wouldn't load any further.

I asked some friends and one of them said it may be that the PSU wasn't up to the job, and to try disconnecting everything except for the 15GB IDE drive and the DVD drive. Everything loaded up without a problem, so I assumed it was a problem with the PSU.

I upgraded the 400w PSU to a 600w one. I plugged everything back in, but got the same problem, freezing at the windows screen.

I tried plugging in only the 15GB bootable disk, DVD drive and SATA drive (leaving my other 500gb IDE drive unplugged). This time it freezes briefly at the windows screen, but then does load up the desktop. At this point it goes into super slow-mode, if you move the mouse it takes about 10-20 seconds for the pointer on the screen to move. It loads up a screen from my RAID controller, showing that it's found the SATA drive, but the system's running too slow to actually be useable. If you unplug the SATA drive then restart the system runs fine.

Does anyone have any idea what could be causing the computer to be running so slowly? I'm getting quite worried, as when everything was working fine (before I fixed the computer problem) I copied all of my music from my 500gb IDE drive to the SATA drive. I don't want to lose all of my music!!!

If it helps, I did a scan of my computer using a program called Belarc....here's the results........

"Operating System System Model
Windows XP Professional Service Pack 2 (build 2600) ASUSTeK Computer INC. A7N8X-X REV 2.xx
Enclosure Type: Desktop
Processor a Main Circuit Board b
2.25 gigahertz AMD Athlon XP
128 kilobyte primary memory cache
256 kilobyte secondary memory cache Board: ASUSTeK Computer INC. A7N8X-X REV 2.xx
Bus Clock: 166 megahertz
BIOS: Phoenix Technologies, LTD ASUS A7N8X-X ACPI BIOS Rev 1005 05/14/2003
Drives Memory Modules c,d
1222.59 Gigabytes Usable Hard Drive Capacity
760.98 Gigabytes Hard Drive Free Space

SAMSUNG DVD-ROM SD-616Q [CD-ROM drive]

QUANTUM FIREBALLlct15 15 [Hard drive] (15.02 GB) -- drive 1, s/n 612022536053, rev A01.0F00, SMART Status: Healthy
ST375033 0AS SCSI Disk Device (750.15 GB) -- drive 0
WDC WD1600BB-00RDA0 [Hard drive] (160.04 GB) -- drive 2, s/n WD-WMANM1806714, rev 20.00K20, SMART Status: Healthy
WDC WD32 00JB-00KFA0 USB Device [Hard drive] (320.07 GB) -- drive 3 2048 Megabytes Installed Memory

Slot 'DDR1' has 1024 MB
Slot 'DDR2' has 512 MB
Slot 'DDR3' has 512 MB
Local Drive Volumes

c: (NTFS on drive 1) 12.08 GB 7.05 GB free
d: (FAT32 on drive 1) 2.93 GB 2.15 GB free
f: (NTFS on drive 0) 750.15 GB 690.53 GB free
g: (NTFS on drive 2) 137.44 GB 51.40 GB free
h: (FAT32 on drive 3) 319.99 GB 9.84 GB free

Network Drives
None detected
Users (mouse over user name for details) Printers
local user accounts last logon
Lobes 29/06/2008 15:20:32 (admin)
local system accounts
Administrator never (admin)
Guest never
HelpAssistant never
SUPPORT_388945a0 never


Marks a disabled account; Marks a locked account Microsoft Office Document Image Writer Driver on Microsoft Document Imaging Writer Port:

Controllers Display
Standard floppy disk controller
NVIDIA nForce2 ATA Controller (v2.6) NVIDIA GeForce 6200 [Display adapter]
COMPAQ MV720 [Monitor] (16.3"vis, s/n 004CE48AVJEK, January 2000)
Bus Adapters Multimedia
VIA VT6421 RAID Controller
NEC PCI to USB Open Host Controller (2x)
Standard Enhanced PCI to USB Host Controller (2x)
Standard OpenHCD USB Host Controller (2x) MPU-401 Compatible MIDI Device
Standard Game Port
Communications Other Devices

1394 Net Adapter
Accton EN1208 PCI Ethernet Adapter
NVIDIA nForce Networking Controller
Physical Address: 00:0C:6E:8C:6A:E8
Texas Instruments OHCI Compliant IEEE 1394 Host Controller
Acronis True Image Backup Archive Explorer
Standard 101/102-Key or Microsoft Natural PS/2 Keyboard
PS/2 Compatible Mouse
USB Mass Storage Device
USB Root Hub (6x) "



If anyone has any ideas on how to get my computer working with the new SATA drive I'd be eternally grateful. If you can work out how to get it working with the SATA drive AND the 500gb IDE drive I'd be even more grateful!!!!

I had similar problems putting my system together, it turned out that one of the 80pin drive cables was at fault. Go figure. Anyway, if this doesn't help try moving the PCI controller card, and if that doesn't work it may be that you system will just not accept PATA and SATA at the same time.