A7N266-VM hangs up

[theformula409]

i just put together this system with the Asus A7N266-VM NForce board, Athlon XP 1600, 512mb crucial PC2100 DDR, and an IBM 120GXP 40gig HDD... here's the deal:

it recognizes everything ok, but after the POST and right before it would normally boot windows, it just stops doing anything. no beeps, no errors, it just stops. then after about 15 seconds it will reboot, and do the same thing.

i've tried the different jumper settings and i'm aware that the manual pictures them backwards. i put the memory in another comp and it worked fine. I tried installing windows on the HD in a nother comp, and no problems. the POST routine recognizes the CPU fine...

i don't know what else todo. any ideas?

 

[tsnyder]

it doesn't sound like you have a hardware problem... if the computer posts, and gets to the point where it shows all your devices just before disk boot than your problem is more than likely that you're not pointing the system to a bootable disk. go to the boot section in the bios and make sure you select the devices you want the system to boot off of. You're cd-rom, hard drive, and floppy should all be options (if they're not recognized I believe they will not appear in the list, but I'm not sure on that). Also be careful not to remove any jumpers from the motherboard... I took out the jumpers that go in place of the Asus iPanel connector on the board and it caused the sound to be disabled.

The computer seems fine, from what you've described... it's just a matter of having the proper settings in the bios. If you had bad memory you more than likely would get an unbootable computer or have warning beeps at post. This isn't always the case but it really doesn't sound like you have a memory problem.

 

[tsnyder]

also, this can be a finicky board (asus boards in general from my experience). clearing the cmos if you're having boot problems might not be a bad idea... of course this board doesn't use a jumper contrary to what the manual says. You simply have to remove the battery and short the leads (where the jumpter should be) with a screwdriver or whatever suits you.

 

[theformula409]

i'm going to try that.

bump

 

[Nocturnal]

try taking out all the usb devices connected to the motherboard and then rebooting.

for some reason i have had two nforce boards that would not boot or install winxp while i had any usb devices installed.

try that, tell me if it works.

 

[theformula409]

ok.... resetting the CMOS didn't work. I did find something interesting though...

when I disconnect the CD drives and HDD, i get a DISK ERROR, since there is no OS. Then when i reconnect the CD drives but still leave the HDD disconencted, i get the same DISK ERROR. however, once I plug back in the HDD, it hangs again. I tried using different jumper settings on the HDD, none of which made any difference.

so i'm still stuck. someone said to take out the USB devices, and i have an optical mouse connected in USB so im going to try it in the PS/2 port and see if it makes a difference.

 

[theformula409]

ok the USB thing didnt work.

also, when I use a WIN98 startup disk it will boot. But it doesn't recognize teh HDD, and therefore installs RAMDrive as C:

 

[tsnyder]

have you run fdisk with the hard drive? it doesn't sound like you've initialized the disk. I mean your system obviously boots of the floppy and the cd-rom drives.

 

[KF]

I'm not sure I understand. Is the HD recognized by the BIOS? How did you install Windows on the HD if the HD is not recognized? Are you saying you are in the process of installing Windows and you get this problem when the install program reboots?

If Windows was installed on the HD before you got this mobo, it is not necessarily strange for it to crash when you switch mobos and try to boot Windows. The install program customizes Windows to the hardware.