Attention: TDR Forum Junkies 
Below is some of what I just experienced for the last week and wonder if anyone else has ever seen anything like this. Sorry so long.
I start out by blowing the dust out of the computer with 30 PSI and less of compressed air, which I have done many times in the past and with more pressure. Remove Serial port add-in card. Install floppy drive (so I can do a format and be able to install RAID drivers). Power-on system and it reboots every time right after detecting HDDs hooked up to the RAID controller. Next I try a different HDD with no OS installed and it appeared that it might boot if it had an OS. This drive did not reboot the system so I'm thinking HDD is dead and get a new one ordered. Next the keyboard stops working and at this point I am thinking the motherboard is done for (never had a keyboard fail). So next I ordered a new motherboard. After receiving and installing the new MB I find that the keyboard still does not work
so I try another board, which worked fine but I was still unable to get windows to boot. I was also unable to even boot from my CD-Rom in order to try formatting and reinstalling XP Pro. So I go on to try a bunch of different combinations of drives and BIOS settings and clearing the CMOS and everything I can think of with no luck at all. So I decide to take it to the so-called professionals in town (first time for this in my life). I explain all this to them and they finally get around to working on it. I get a call the next day and they tell me they got it partly fixed. They were able to get windows installed once but upon restarting the system they got the "NTLDR is missing" message. So they give the final diagnosis as "failing hard drive and settings on MB were not correct”. Funny thing is I found no jumpers that were changed from what I had set them too. Here is the kicker. They had unplugged my floppy drive and then plugged it back in backwards, which accounts for the clunking sound they were calling a failing HDD. They also told me that the mouse didn't work in Windows, LOL, they had it disabled in the bios, idiots. Anyway I know the HDD is not failing because I have never heard one bad sound out of it before or after they had it and it’s running fine right now as I type.
So at this point I take it home to try and install XP on the new Maxtor 120GB SATA 150 drive and have no luck with that either. I am able to get part way through copying system files and it locks up every time. I again tried all hard drives using different IDEs and also tried both CD drives. I tried different ribbon cables and everything I could think of. I tried my memory in another computer and it checked out fine. I ran a diagnostic on the suspect hard drive in another computer and it checked out fine. I even tried a different power supply and no change. I tried running the system with only a minimum of things connected to make it operate and still no go. Finally I decided to put the original MB back in since the keyboard was bad when last working with it. I installed it with only the minimum of things connected and try loading the OS on the original main HDD hooked up to IDE 1 and it installs just fine with no problems. Next I hook up the new SATA drive and unhook the other drives and install on it, which also goes well. I then shut down and hook everything back up like I want it and make order in the case.
During this whole ordeal I went through many floppy disks loading the RAID drivers on. Man these floppies are junk now days. I sure wish Microsoft would give an option for another drive other then A: for these drivers. All this took place over a weeks time and had me going absolutely nuts.
I am wondering if it could have been related to static electricity cause by the compressed air that might have charged a part that took time to discharge during the week I worked on the problem. Did something fry the keyboard when I plugged it back in or did the keyboard charge something on the MB? I don’t know but wonder if anyone out there knows if static can cause problems like this. This is not an exact account of what happened and much is left out.
Thanks for listening,
Mark
I start out by blowing the dust out of the computer with 30 PSI and less of compressed air, which I have done many times in the past and with more pressure. Remove Serial port add-in card. Install floppy drive (so I can do a format and be able to install RAID drivers). Power-on system and it reboots every time right after detecting HDDs hooked up to the RAID controller. Next I try a different HDD with no OS installed and it appeared that it might boot if it had an OS. This drive did not reboot the system so I'm thinking HDD is dead and get a new one ordered. Next the keyboard stops working and at this point I am thinking the motherboard is done for (never had a keyboard fail). So next I ordered a new motherboard. After receiving and installing the new MB I find that the keyboard still does not work
so I try another board, which worked fine but I was still unable to get windows to boot. I was also unable to even boot from my CD-Rom in order to try formatting and reinstalling XP Pro. So I go on to try a bunch of different combinations of drives and BIOS settings and clearing the CMOS and everything I can think of with no luck at all. So I decide to take it to the so-called professionals in town (first time for this in my life). I explain all this to them and they finally get around to working on it. I get a call the next day and they tell me they got it partly fixed. They were able to get windows installed once but upon restarting the system they got the "NTLDR is missing" message. So they give the final diagnosis as "failing hard drive and settings on MB were not correct”. Funny thing is I found no jumpers that were changed from what I had set them too. Here is the kicker. They had unplugged my floppy drive and then plugged it back in backwards, which accounts for the clunking sound they were calling a failing HDD. They also told me that the mouse didn't work in Windows, LOL, they had it disabled in the bios, idiots. Anyway I know the HDD is not failing because I have never heard one bad sound out of it before or after they had it and it’s running fine right now as I type.
So at this point I take it home to try and install XP on the new Maxtor 120GB SATA 150 drive and have no luck with that either. I am able to get part way through copying system files and it locks up every time. I again tried all hard drives using different IDEs and also tried both CD drives. I tried different ribbon cables and everything I could think of. I tried my memory in another computer and it checked out fine. I ran a diagnostic on the suspect hard drive in another computer and it checked out fine. I even tried a different power supply and no change. I tried running the system with only a minimum of things connected to make it operate and still no go. Finally I decided to put the original MB back in since the keyboard was bad when last working with it. I installed it with only the minimum of things connected and try loading the OS on the original main HDD hooked up to IDE 1 and it installs just fine with no problems. Next I hook up the new SATA drive and unhook the other drives and install on it, which also goes well. I then shut down and hook everything back up like I want it and make order in the case.
During this whole ordeal I went through many floppy disks loading the RAID drivers on. Man these floppies are junk now days. I sure wish Microsoft would give an option for another drive other then A: for these drivers. All this took place over a weeks time and had me going absolutely nuts.
I am wondering if it could have been related to static electricity cause by the compressed air that might have charged a part that took time to discharge during the week I worked on the problem. Did something fry the keyboard when I plugged it back in or did the keyboard charge something on the MB? I don’t know but wonder if anyone out there knows if static can cause problems like this. This is not an exact account of what happened and much is left out.
Thanks for listening,
Mark
