New builo compute problems

[larryjh2]

Building a new replacement computer for
this old one and have run into a problem
I have not encountered before.

New parts:
Epox motherboard 8K9a71,
AMD Athlon XP 2000 processor,
512 megs of ram, PC 3200 Premier Ocz,
Maxtor 7200 rpm 60 gig hard drive.
New 18" round cables color coded.

Old parts:
A0pen Cd/Dvd drive.
Gigabyte ATI Radeon video card

Problem:

Computer when started starts to post
as normal but as soon as it get to detecting hard drives it seem to stall.

Entered bios and both the harddrive and c/d drive are recognized. (I did have problems getting the drives in the proper order of listing) It took about 5 minutes to get the bios screen
after deleting key used. When exiting it required another 5 minutes to get past the "detecting hard drives" on the post to be told no hard drives detected.

I tried to boot to the floppy and will
load up a Maxtor program called "maxblastor" downloaded onto a floppy. "C"\ is displayed on the monitor yet when trying to prompt to
floppy it just repeats "command.com
missing"

Tried to boot to c/d with window 2000
program disk. It would appear to begin to load and suddenly stop and
state "error 7" and thats it.

Any Ideas? Thanks in advance.

Larry

[cleverardvark]

Try flashing your bios by moving the pin if you can figer that one out or remoove the batery for about 30sec.
this will set your bios back to defolt.

[Eric Legge]

version of Windows? 2000?

I would try using ribbon cables instead of round ones.

They can be problematic.

Eric.
http://www.pcbuyerbeware.co.uk

[BipolarBill]

If you are using a Zip drive, disconnect it. Try disconnecting the CD drive - or at least check the jumpers.

[larryjh2]

Thanks for the imput, I will try each
suggestion and report back.

Larry

[TweakerXP]

IS this a clean install or is the OS still on the HD?

If you're taking the HD from the old system with the OS still on the HD and putting it in the NEW system. Don't think that's going to work very well.

Try a fresh ,lemond scented, clean install.

Good Luck!

[larryjh2]

Tried all your suggestions, all failed, this
is a new o/s install. could it be a bad
new mother board or new harddrive?

What gets me is why it takes 4 1/2 minutes to check for harddrives, it finds
my slave c/d drive but not the harddrive.

To get to bios it takes the same amount
of time when posting starts.

any other suggestions would be welcome.

Larry

[BipolarBill]

The Maxtor is either bad, misjumpered or has a bad cable.

Still, try removing the CD drive and testing. It may be affecting bootup.

[G]

I agree with Bill.

It would make life much easier for you if you could remove any optical devices first.

Now work on the HDD problem. It may be related to jumpers being incorrectly assigned or unnecessary in the first instance. This will be trial and error.

Normally the first HDD is jumpered as Master and the secondary HDD are jumpered as Slave.

However, it can also be the case that the Master does not need to be jumpered at all but the secondary HDD needs to be jumpered as Slave.

Incorrectly jumpered HDDs can cause the problems you are experiencing.

Keep the HDD on the same EIDE ribbon or rounded cable on EIDE 1

Keep optical drives on EIDE 2 using the same assignment and arrangement as with the HDD instructions described above.

Note the cables have to be correctly configured correctly. Blue end to motherboard, black to HDD. Note the orientation of the red strip indicating pin 1 also and don’t forget to attach the power plug. Your HDD manual will be of great help so read it carefully.

G

[larryjh2]

Finally got some action. I reset all my drives to cable sellect,
added my c/d writer, and now the post goes by in seconds, all
drives found. The c/d-dvd player csl slave, the c/d burner is set
csl master, both on ide 2. The only thing on ide 1 is the hard drive and set cls master.

The only problem now seems to be my win 2000 pro disk, when booting to the c/d drive it cant seem to find a bootable disk. I am
somehow still missing something. could my problems be in bios.

When I checked, all drives are recognized and in proper order, at least in the standard cmos feature listing. When checking the Advance cmos features listing, 'hard disk boot priority' shows only
c drive and below that show any other moveable disk. The booklet that came with the mother board example shows all installed drives. mother board has award 6.0 bios installed.

getting close but still no cigar

any futher suggestions will be welcome.

larry

[BipolarBill]

You have to make the boot sequence Floppy, CD, HDD-0.

[G]

If you are installing Windows for the first time then make the first bootable device within the BIOS, CD-ROM.

Not all machines will allow this simple route of booting via the Windows CD-Rom even when the first bootable device is the CD-ROM. This tends to happen with older machine though.

Otherwise using the Windows CD-Rom it is possible to create the series of bootable floppy diskette needed. This runs to 4 for W2K and 6 for WinXP.

If you need further assistance please do not hesitate to get in contact.

G

[larryjh2]

Thanks everybody for the imput, I'm gonna try using the boot floppy suggested by "G".

Larry