Originally posted by: UKnowWhat
AndyBogard,
Here is my post over the
OCW Forum and few posts down, how I solved my WD drives problem. I don't know whether it applies to you but I think my problem is very similar to yours.
----- My post ----
I just finished putting in my A64 3000+ with a 9NDA3+ MB. Everything went OK except for 1 thing, WinXP SP2 installation causes system repetitively crash with BSOD error 07E during installation. Update to the new Epox Bios ver date 2/15/05 won't solve the problem. After pulling a few hairs here & there, reading about certain type of RAM doesn't work, and especially after reading so many posts about the glory PSU with extravaganza juices on 12V supply, and read much of bugstop error 7E, I decided to put in a vanilla ATI PCI Rage video card as my primary video source instead of using my Matrox G400 AGP card (yes, I did all of the disabled fast write before doing this). Guess what? XP installed perfectly. Later I went to Matrox to download a new driver for my G400, everything went smooth since.
The moral of this story is don't replace your RAM or your PSU right away. There might be something else in your system that WinXP doesn't like. No one's problem is alike and Epox manual specified their MB only requires 200W and 300W PSU should be good enough for common people without a lot of toys in their system. I will tell whether my "400W" PSU will be good enough when I start tinkering with my A64.
A64 3000 not OC yet
512MB "cheap" value Kingston DDR-RAM PC3200
PSU A1 Power "400W" with only "15A" @ 12V
Matrox G400 AGP
WD 160GB
NEC DVD ND-2500
---- end of my post ---
I suggest you to
1) Set your BIOS to fail safe mode.
2) Put a vanilla PCI video card in and set your BIOS to power up with PCI video card as primary device.
Regarding the WD drive problem. I noticed that during power up, the MB hanged on detecting IDE so I just set the jumper position to single (no jumper). That solved the hanging of IDE drives detection, but then I ran into another problem after I have installed WinXP. See the post following that about how I solved my 2nd drive installed after I have successfully installed my WinXP. Right now my system runs stable at standard speed. No OC yet but I will do it later just for the heck of it.
I appreciate the fact your trying to help me UKnowWhat, but I have a different problem.
I can't even get to my bios. I can power on the computer and it seems like everything fires up, except that I get no video going to my monitor. I can't get to bios, or post. I haven't installed Windows yet because I have no video output. I already swapped out the video card and tried a 9700 pro that I have and still nothing, and I know the 9700 pro works because its powering the computer I'm typing this on.
I don't have a PCI video card around, if I did I would have tried that. The 2 PSUs I listed are PSUs not meant for the computer I'm having this problem with. In that computer I have an OCZ Powerstream 520watt PSU.
Heres my system specs (this is the one I'm having this problem with, newly built, everything is new):
Epox 9NDA3+
Athlon 64 3200+
1 gig of Corsair XMS PC4400C25 (DDR550)
Sapphire X800XT AGP
Seagate 300gb IDE hard drive
Plextor PX-716A
Cooler Master Stacker
OCZ Powerstream 520watt PSU
I've tried a different video card and no luck. I tried different ram and no luck. I've cleared the CMOS, no luck. I reinserted the processor, memory, and reseated my ATX and 12V connectors and still no luck.
Everything turns on in my system, even the fan on my X800XT (and my 9700pro fan runs too when that was installed) works. Since both cards won't output video on this setup I don't think its the PSU since both cards require different power connectors, anyways the fans on both cards work in this setup too.
My port 80 displays code FF, which from the manual looks like a motherboard problem.
I think its the motherboard. I'm probaly going to order a MSI Neo2 Platinum and hope I have better luck.