First post:

Thank you so much for helping me through this. Search has not turned up sufficient leads.

I'm feeling like a bad auto mechanic. Clueless as to how to fix this, I'm set to replace components until this problem goes away. First, the Mobo; then, the CPU.

PC: C2D-E4500, GA-945GCM(X)-S2 (Intel 945+ICH7) has been working fine since I pieced it together 8 months ago until now. Error message: Cannot find Windows/System.sav.

XP/OS is on a slave IDE Hard Drive that is not powering up/or is intermittently powered. The Master CD/DVD drive (same IDE cable) however, does power up (communication is fine there). Nothing is wrong with the HD, it's fully accessable as a secondary drive in another PC. Disk check there shows no bad sectors, nada anything wrong.
I switched out the IDE cable; same condition. I switched in a new PSU; same condition. The USB port on the front panel no longer receives power (red light on dongle no longer lights up). Num Lock switch curiously blazes on now after power down. I swapped it's 2 one gig memory cards every which way; same condition.

Bios does recognize that HD on power up. Windows XP install disk executes install to it but hangs every attempt. It prints to it, but..

Yes, I know enough about BIOS -changing start drive sequences as needed, etc..


This PC is used for audio recording, it's never been exposed to the net. No changes have been made to it settings for months.
What the heck's going on? I suspect the MOBO's gone bad (visual inspection, however, shows no blown caps). Others suggest it's the CPU that's bad: failing to execute commands properly. What do you guys think? Can flash bios fix this?

This is unfamiliar territory here. What controls power on/off to components? When that goes haywire, where do you look? How is this managed? This is not North or South Bridge stuff, is it?
Thanks. Leonard

By an AMD next time lol