Hello David,

At 04:36 PM 4/7/98 , you wrote:

>I've got a little P5 system with Tyan 430TX mobo, Pentium 166 MMX,
>64 MB SDRAM, WD 3.2 UDMA HDD. It has been behaving nicely for
>months.

  UDMA? Hmm...  NT Does not really support this, at least it is the word.
Although if it is running in regular DMA mode it should not be a problem.

>Today I power it up and it performs maybe 75% of the boot and stops.
>Windows NT logo is on the screen. The HDD LED burns continuously.
>No evidence of disk activity (no audible sound, etc.). On the second
>try, it boots OK. I run Norton Disk Doc. on the 1 gb C: and Norton
>sez no problems detected.

>If the thang stops loading software and the HDD lite stays on, it
>__has__ to be hardware. Right?? So maybe theres a sporadic and
>hard-to-replicate fault in the HDD??

  This could either be a problem with the motherboard.  One of us has
suggested this and he maybe right. I had this same problem today at the
shop. What it was, eas that hdd controller had a minor bug in it. The
reason I know it was the hdd controller? I put the drive on another machine
and worked fine, no problems.

  Another one of us say it could be an NT hang. I do not think so, since NT
is one of the most stable Intel PC operating systems out right now. Plus NT
would not hang, it would do a text dmp and reboot.

>I'm open to any suggestions, any advice. Does Western Digital have
>diagnostic programs on their site that I should try? Etc, etc.

  Try replacing the motherboard and see if this is the problem.  if you are
lucky you might have a warrantee on the motherboard still :)


Regards,

Tim Lider
Advanced Data Solutions              ICQ: 7562541
Web Site: http://www.adv-data.com E-Mail: Mailto:[log in to unmask]