asus a7v8x won't boot

[beebie]

Hello,

Last friday i pruchased some elements to upgrade my computer from a 350mhz to a more powerfull one. I decided to by an Asus A7V8X in combination with an AMD Athlon XP 2400+. But unfortunately, after installing the whole the computer did not boot. It got as far as running the POST and when it was looking for a bot dvice it stopped doing anything until it said; no boot disk.

when i disconnected everything except the floppydrive and inserted a bootable disk then things went as normal. But as soon as i re-installed a hard drive; it didn't work no longer.
I thought the error would be caused because i had an inadequate power supply of 200w, so i went back to the store today and bought a 350w one.

But after installing the unit nothing changed. Could you please advice me on what i am doing wrong??


System specs:
Asus A7V8X
AMD Athlon XP 2400+ 2 Ghz
512MB DDR-Ram 333
Nvidia GeForce2 MX 400 AGP vga-card
HDD master: IBM 10gb (model: DTT-351010)
HDD slave: Seagate Barraccuda ATA IV 80gb (model: ST380021a)
Plextor plexwriter 24/10/40x a
Creative Labs 48x cdrom
3com Fast Ethernet XL PCI 10/100mbs
Codecom ATX switching power supply 350w
HP Deskjet 815c USB
Logitech optical wheel-mouse PS/2
Compaq V75 17" Monitor


Thanx in advance!

[$1500-P4 gamer]

Is the HDD light on this hole time you have the HDD hooked up. IF so flip the ide cable. THe red stripe should point to the 1 pin on hdd. Also make sure the HDD is plugged into the Blue interface its marked primary. Thats where it looks for the boot drive. In bios you must have the boot order set to what you need. If useing a bootable floppy then cd to install windows set it like this. Floppy first-then HDD. If useing bootable windows cd (most of us do) then just select cdrom firts boot device then hdd. Should work now.

PS. I have the same board. Was your ram a SOB to get in the dimms. Mine was friggen real tight-like creaking the board bad tight.:)

[BipolarBill]

The IBM drive has specific jumpering for master w/wo slave. Double-check it.

[beebie]

The led was on the whole time, but this was probably due to the fact that the jumper was the wrong way around.

The drive is set in the correct way. (i checked it, but it worked perfectly before i swithced mobo)
I think with the rest of my jumpers and all is nothing wrong.
The drive is recognised in the bios and also at the POST but when i start it up using a simple winxp dos-disk it just isn't there...
One my power supply it says it has an +12V output of 10A. while, if i calculate it i need about 10.5A (7.1A for the CPU, 0.3 for Mobo, 2A for HDD, 0.8 for fan, 0.25A for cd-rom, all according to this page: http://firingsquad.gamers.com/guides/power_supply/page2.asp)

Do you think this is the cause of the problem??? (see, i live in holland and i bought the stuff in germany, i wouldn't want to go back for nothing for the third time...)

When i kind a use a different computer to provide power for my HDD and the new one for only the mobo and PCU it still doesn't do anything...

i am completely lost now...

[Ammok]

Start from scratch, i got an A7n8x and it is the best mobo I have ever had, you will love it when you get it working.

Your problem appears to be the hard drive at the moment. My suggestion, take the 80 gb hdd and install on it's own, make sure you have only one floppy drive connected, and boot from the floppy. Once in the floppy, do a dos dir on the c:\ drive and see what it tells you.

Have you speech post reporter enabled? what does he say?

But try this first and if it dont work disconnect 80gb and try same procedure with 10gb drive. post back results, we'll crack it, with a little bit of help from our freinds.

[beebie]

Done that.

The funny thing is that when using the HDD from a different computer (6.4 gb) it boots normally. However, after you get the short 'preparing to start windows' message it gives a fatal exception, after which it won't continue.
When i put the HDD back in its original computer there is nothing wrong with it.

Trying this the other way around it works fine as well. and the thing you say with the 80gb and 10gb on their own won't work either. (i tried almost everything like that)
Looks like the system is very unstable (possibly due to the low amps delivered???)

By the way, i rebuild the rig from scratch trying to find the error and the vocal error messages worked fine until i added the HDD, then it didn't give any errors and went nicely past the POST and such. but again it crashed on trying to boot....

How's that for not doing what it should...

[Ammok]

I think the hdd needs to be reformated and loaded with a new install of the opsys.

boot to the floppy and use fdisk to completly reformat the drive. now add the op sys and then add the mobo drivers.

if xp, boot to the cd rom and do the same, reformat and re-install.

It would not be possible for hdd to be put back in its old machine and it to boot "normally" would it?, it would have asus nf2 drivers for a start. Equally, if you took a hdd from an old machine it would not work on the asus either, as it would not have the asus nf2 drivers.

Reformat and your away, hopefully.
:)

[beebie]

Well, guess what...


Seems that is doing the trick.... don't know whether it is working but the setup is running and currently reformatting the drive....


so bought a 400w suplly for nothing hey....:rolleyes:

hope it works... it seems awfully slow at the moment... but will get to that later.


Thanks a million!!!!!

AMMOK RULEZ!

[beebie]

Well, when setup tells me to restart; it just won't boot from the HDD and i end up starting all over again. this sucks!


would you know what my bios-settings ought to be?
The thing seems to be running real slow, especially when booting.... (takes about 2 minutes before it does anything...)
what should the settings about the cpu be (voltage,. speed, etc etc)

thx again

[beebie]

i just don't understand...
how come the bios and the setup in windows both detect the drive but when the drive is needed for booting or when i run partition magic it just isn't there...


:mad: :confused: :confused:

[Ammok]

You probably have done this already, but just make sure that the bios boot sequence includes ide0 and not just the cdrom and floppy. What is the op sys you are installing?

Make your boot sequence cdrom, floppy ide0 and see what happens. We''ll get there, even if we have to go through bios one step at a time.:) Keep heart.

[BipolarBill]

Did the old IBM by chance have EZ-BIOS or Disk Manager installered on it for an older PC?

[beebie]

Ok,
in the bios i can only choose what device i want, say one from floppy, one from cd-rom and one from IDE drives.
So it automatically looks for a bootable device on all 3.

I was trying to install XP.

And there's one thing that bothers me a lot and that's that it takes ages for the rig to choose where to boot from
(normally it should takes about 5seconds max; now it takes nearly 2 to 3 minutes before it starts from cd or floppy...)

[beebie]

BipolarBill, not that i know of....
but if it were; shouldn't all of that be gone when formatted?

[BipolarBill]

Originally posted by beebie
shouldn't all of that be gone when formatted? No...EZ-BIOS survives formatting - as does Disk Manager. You have to use the disk maker's tool to remove it or Zap it.

http://service.boulder.ibm.com/storage/hddtech/zap.exe

[Ammok]

remove the nic card and disable lan in bios, that should speed you up.(also disable sound firewire and sata and anything else getting in the way at the moment).

Once you've done a zap reformat and try to change the partion size to 40gb, we can worry about the other 40gig later, and re-install xp. This time leave out the 3com nic, the plexwriter and only boot with vid card cpu memory and the 48x cdrom and the seagate.

[beebie]

well, i started the computer using without an HDD in it and it worked as fast as it would normally do..
is there anything within the bios that could interfere with the communication between the drive and the rest of the rig?

[BipolarBill]

Yes - bad hardware. Remove that silly 10GB drive.

[beebie]

done,
just have to safe some stuff off the 80gb one and ill start all over...


thx

[Ammok]

Ooooh, he's sooooo senssitive, to a fault.LOL.:D

[beebie]

:mad:


i am working here!!
;)

[BipolarBill]

LOL!

[Ammok]

Take your time beebie, patience is needed here, BipolarBill is an ace at this stuff and rarely wrong, (in fact I save up all his wrong stuff and hope to present the postage stamp to him when he retires)

[BipolarBill]

True - I may be mistaken, but I'm never wrong. :p

[Ammok]

When I hear your wife say that I'll beleive you.LOL.:D

My good lady will tell you that I am "always mistaken and always wrong".LOL.

[Emogie923]

Is the hd set to "Active"? And did you use the old IDE ribbons or the new ones. Just a long shot but I didn't see these mentioned in the earlier posts. As for the fatal exception after putting an old drive on the new MOBO, your OS freaked and didn't know what to do with the new hardware. I had that same problem once swapping mobo's with WIN 2k. I would look at the IDE Ribbons. Also see in the bios if there is a way to change it to HALT ON: and change it to "no errors". Disconnect the floppy and the cd-rom. Try to boot for either IDE port. After it's done (And hopefully you get it to boot) Put the no errors back to it's default.

[beebie]

Guys,
At the moment i am still trying to save all the data on the 80gb drive (read: i am burning cds like a madman...) so when i am finished i can continue the battle...

Unfortunately, tomorrow i will be going away for the weekend and i will continue on sunday afternoon. Hope you check up on me by then to see how things are going... i am gonna be pretty pleased to see you guys still caring about my struggle... and beside that i reckon i'll be needing some more help if my rig is as faithful as it has been these past days.
Anyway, for now thanks heaps for the efforts (especially Ammok and BipolarBill! :t) and have a nice weekend!

Hope we can still crack this one when i get back.

Yours sincerely,
Beebie
:cool:

[Ammok]

We'll be here, God willing.:)

[beebie]

Fear no more; due to high standard tips and tricks :p....

IT's WORKING!!!!

I got rid of the 10gb drive and made the 80gb the only drive... which did the trick...:cool:

Just one more question;

I've got an onboard LAN (1gbs???) unit and a PCI 3com Ethernet controller 10/100 Mbs; which one should i use? (and why?)


Well, for now, thanks heaps for your effort! My rig would've been lying out on the street under my window for a week now if it wasn't for you guys... :x

So thanks again!

Beebie

[BipolarBill]

Originally posted by beebie
I've got an onboard LAN (1gbs???) unit and a PCI 3com Ethernet controller 10/100 Mbs; which one should i use? (and why?)Onboard - because I said so! Save your PCI slot for another toy.

[Ammok]

Way to go, glad you got it working. :D and I think you got two onboard lan's there and an awesome sound system onboard also.:)