ok im tired of how long my rig takes to get to the windows boot screen. when i have 2 optical drives connected, it takes a long time to get windows to start booting. however with either one connected, it boots up fast. right now im using the antec truepower 430w, could it be that i dont have enough juice? i got my multimeter here, it some kind of radioshack one that can hook up to the serial port of the pc (lost the software). how do i go about checking my voltages,like where do the red and black cables hook up to the molex and do i set it up on ac or dc or what? i need to solve this problem asap. also i think there seems to be an issue with the temps on my board, if it were actually 55ºC i wouldnt be able to touch my hs/f and on 40 its not even warm, still must get the xp-120.

maybe your problem with the temps are the fact that your hs isnt warm. That means you arent getting good contact. maybe.

i doubt it. asides from the temps, how can i check my voltages? i dont think im gettin the volts im supposed to be getting.

you will have to set the multi meter to read dc current then put the black lead on the black wire and the red lead on the other wires to see their voltage

You don't need to hookup the multimeter to the serial port. Set the multimeter to DC for measuring voltages from the PSU. The black probe goes to any ground (black wire) while the red probe goes to the wire that your are measuring. The orange wire is 3.3v, red is 5v, and yellow is 12v. It is preferred to measure at the ATX connector by squeezing the probe in between the plastic and the wire. You only need to squeeze the probe in far enough to make contact with the metal. You can also measure from a molex connector as well.

ok, well i tested my psu, and at load i get between 11.90-12.03 on the 12v, for the 5v i get 5.02 on the 5v, this is on load. i got a cheapo 250w psu that im gonna use to power my fans i guess.

Those voltages are perfectly fine. If the 12v rail was dipping below lets say 11.7v for example then I would start to worry.

k thanks, hopefully i can order my new psu today along with a few new video cards, hsf and hdd hehe.

As was said, that PSU is fine. The rails are ABOVE their rated values, guy! What more could you ask for?!?

I see this problem occasionally. Try changing the jumpers on the optical drives from MA and SL to CS (or vice versa) and try a different IDE cable if that doesn't help.

Sounds like a hardware issue to me.

Could be that the BIOS is setting the optical at the SL position to the Bootable CD Drive, as well. Check to make sure that isn't the case.

Good luck.