First time building a PC...

[Titus82]

First time poster here, though I've often lurked here. This is also my first time building a computer, and I am finding out that I didn't know as much about computers as I thought I did, but at least I'm learning. Anyway, the short of it is that I can get my system to post, but it won't detect any of the drives, nor can I flash any new bios that the mobo has.

Here is my setup:

AMD 2500 Barton
ASUS A7N8X-X (mobo)
1x512mb DDR 333 RAM
120gb Hitachi Hard drive
9600se Radeon 128mb
Along with a CD burner and a floppy.

Details:

I installed the processor and heat sink just fine, it turns out I put the RAM in the wrong slot, the board has three slots, one is a little off from the other, it has dual channel support from what I've been told. So I connected the hard drive and CD-rom drive (the burner) and turned it on, it then said something like:

"Processor is running at 1100mhz
[total bytes of ram] running at 100mhz
Detecting IDE drives..."

But it never detects the drives. At the bottom of the screen it says I can hit DEL to enter setup or press alt+F4 to flash newer bios, the DEL doesn't seem to work, but when I tried the alt+f4 it said "Decompressing AWDFlash.EXE, Please Wait" for over seven minutes. Was I impatient?

I then uninstalled the hard drive, to see what would happen, and to make sure that there wasn't another way to hook the ribbon up, and when I booted the system up without the hard drive I got a different message, this time it said the Floppy failed (it wasn't installed at the time) and there were no drives installed (the CD-ROM was installed using the secondary ribbon - PIN.)

So now I put the Hard drive back in, and hooked up the floppy which I finally managed to pull out of my old system, and the light on the Floppy stays on, and once again it says "Detecting IDE drives..."

I can't quite figure this one out... Is there something I am missing? Doing wrong? Any help would be MUCH appreciated!

-Seamus.

 

[Duvie]

Do a quick once over to make sure the IDE drives are jumpered correctly. many of the newer drives have several options over the old days of master/slave/ and cable select....now they have master with no other devices on the channel, master with 2 devices, etc.....A bit more specific and the wrong setting could cause the bios to not detect it properly...

Also try a few cables and make sure you have the appropriate end of the cable installed to its correct slot.


Ultimately you could have a fubarred cmos or a bad ide slot....

Try pulling the cmos battery and reset the mobo back to factory positions and see if you can boot and get into the bios properly with the del key....

Are there jumpers on this board?? Cause it is obvious the intial bootup default of 100fsb kicked in and you will need to change this to 166fsb to run with the barton 2500+ as stock.

 

[ST4RCUTTER]

Titus82,

Duvie is pointing you in the right direction. As he said, you need to make sure all your drives are cabled and jumpered correctly. It's always a good idea to read through all the manuals of your hardware to get familiar with the equipment. I suggest getting to know the mobo and the BIOS pretty well.

As stated, the default FSB speed was 100Mhz instead of the 166 that will be required to run your Barton at stock speed. You will need to adjust that in the BIOS. You might just want to set the jumpers on the drives to "cable select" and let the hardware decide on its own which device to make master and slave. Usually this works just fine. The reason you got the error regarding the floppy is because it was looking for one and couldn't find it. If the light on your floppy stays on it's usually because your power cable is flipped around. This is easier to do with floppy drives...virtually impossible to do with IDE drives. Good luck.

 

[nageov3t]

sounds dumb, but if you have some extra IDE cables laying around, you might want to try replacing the cables themselves too.

 

[Serp86]

make hard disk jumper Primary Master
make CD-RW jumper Secondary Master

enter the bios. select cpu model - chose 2500+

 

[Serp86]

Sorry - double post

 

[Richard98]

Your problems could also be related to the floppy drive. When it wasn't installed, perhaps your CMOS had it set as installed. Now that you have it installed, the floppy drive cable is on backwards because the light on the drive stays on:

"So now I put the Hard drive back in, and hooked up the floppy which I finally managed to pull out of my old system, and the light on the Floppy stays on, and once again it says "Detecting IDE drives..."

Disconnect the cable from the floppy drive, turn it around and re-connect. I've connected the floppy cable backwards myself and it will definitely stop the machine from booting.

 

[DN]

Disconnect the cable from the floppy drive, turn it around and re-connect. I've connected the floppy cable backwards myself and it will definitely stop the machine from booting.

Agreed..

 

[Titus82]

Thanks for the responses everyone, I do apprecate your taking time to help me out.

The Floppy IDE cable was indeed reversed, now that it is on correctly I think I got a good sign, the system boots up and allows me into BIOS as long as the hard drive is not installed. When it is hooked up I get the same problem, the system stays at "Detecting IDE devices..." I do take this as a good sign though, since it seems to suggest that the mobo isn't messed up (my reasoning is that at least one of the IDE ports is in working order.) Of course with just the floppy there doesn't seem to be much for me to do, I can't install an OS, even if the Hard Drive were installed, the CD-RW doesn't register either (nor can I open the tray, I just tried that this time around, and when I press the button nothing happens, nor did I notice the light come on.)

So I was thinking it could be the power supply, maybe the Hard drive and CD-RW just aren't getting power. But the Hard Drive must be getting power, since the small power cable that us plugged into the floppy is a split off of the one that is hooked into the hard drive. (The CD-RW is connected via a seperate set of wires.)

Which brings me to wonder if it could be both the Hard Drive and CD-RW that is at fault. The HD is a Hitachi from Newegg, while the CD-RW is older from Best Buy, originally bought for this system a few months ago (won't work on this old comp though, so I saved it, deciding then that I would put together a budget system. ) Two parts at fault? Unlikely, but possible. To make sure this isn't the case, I will install my current CD-ROM drive into the new PC and see what happens.

It is possible I have missed jumpers, there were four blue little things that were in the same baggy the ribbons, I didn't do anything with them. I have a feeling that I really messed up there now that I think about it. Speaking of jumpers, I set the hard drive to 16 head Cable Select. There are two sets of opens that are listed on the HD, 16 head and 15 head Master, Slave, and Cable select. I'll try 15 along with the CD-ROM tomorrow.

Oh another note, moving my ram to that slot thats slightly off from the others did not give it dual-channel, but it doubled the speed to 200mhz, closer to 333mhz.

I am such a newbie... But I don't regret this... At least not yet I don't

 

[Titus82]

Doh! I forgot the most important thing of all! When I unhook the Hard Drive it will boot up and let me into BIOS and then it will go through a bunch of other stuff, as if it were starting up, and finally end with some sort of error message like: "BOOT FAILURE! Please insert boot disk" (not word for word, but thats generally the point of the message.)

Of course there is no disk.

 

[Texun]

Let me make a suggestion: Please tackle one problem at a time! While reading through your latest update I see a powering issue. You said the CD door won't open and the LED won't light up? I suppose this is with the PC on, correct? Even if you didn't have the ribbon cable connected the CDR should open up. The fact that it doesn't suggests that you should check all power cables again. They only go in one way so it should be easy. I didn't see what kind of Power supply you are using so post that and it might help, just get ready for a ton of posts telling you to ditch it if it's a no-name generic. But before you go that far let's find out why you aren't getting any power to the CDR. Chances are that whatever is wrong there is probably related to the HD. Do you hear the HD spinning up at all when you hit the power button?

All I would suggest at this time is to recheck all power leads and connections. Don't make any other changes until you are sure you are not having a power problem. Also, try not to have all of your drives powered from the same lead... like Christmas lights. Even though each lead may have several connectors, try and limit the current draw by using the other leads where possible.

While you are checking the power cables, double check the ribbon cables for proper orientation. Stripe side should be closest to the power connector - as long as the orientation on the motherboard is correct. You should see the number "1" on the board on one end of the EIDE socket. Are you using the socket marked EIDE 0 for the HD? The blue connector on the ribbon cable goes there. Sorry if this seems contradicting; I suggested tackling one thing at a time but since you are going to be in the same neighborhood checking the power cables, a quick look at the ribbons won't hurt.

Let us know what you have when this is done.

Best of luck!

 

[GonzoDaGr8]

ASUS Provides owners with an extremely good user's manual. Read it from end to end...Your getting close, Just missing something important by a little bit.