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New build wont work!

E

elchorizo

Limp Gawd
Joined
Mar 26, 2004
Messages
234
Hey everyone,

I’m having some serious trouble putting a new machine together for my parents. I’m hoping you guys will have some insight.

Ok, heres the story. The computer is able to boot from the WinXP (I’ve also tried Win2k) CD but it hangs during install every time. It always hangs before the part where you’d format the hard disk. What happens is that the computer boots up and gets to the part where you have to choose “Enter” to install windows in this computer. Then normally it would go right away to a screen that allows you to set up partitions and format. However, it never reaches that part. When you hit enter it just hangs forever.

Earlier it wasn’t always stopping at that point. It would hang at seemingly random points (it never has got past that part though). This lead me to think that perhaps the heatsink wasn’t seated properly and therefore the proc was overheating. I reseated the heatsink and now it always gets to the part I mentioned above. However, there is now a definite error message. The installer says that windows cant find a hard disk to install to. This message has only started showing up since I reseated the heatsink.

I’ve tried several hard disks with different but very similar results with all of them. One in particular had some interesting results. The disk is kind of loud so I can really hear the spinning behavior. When you hit enter at the screen mentioned above and while you’re waiting for the format screen the disk sounds like it is trying to spin up but cant quite reach full speed. It does this a couple times and then just spins down completely and the install hangs. With this particular disk there is no error message, the install just stays on that screen till I reboot. The error screen I mentioned above happens on a couple other hard disks but not this one.

The weird spinning behavior of this hard disk (and I think others were doing the same thing although they were harder to hear) make me think that perhaps the power supply is having problems. Maybe the disk isn’t getting enough power. All that is hooked up to the power supply is the mobo, cdrom, and hard disk so I’d think there would be plenty of power to go around. Also, I’ve never had a bad power supply before so I have no idea if the behavior being exhibited could be caused by a bad power supply.

I’ve also tried 3 different optical drives, all 3 of which were known to be working.

So, what do you guys think it could be? I don’t think ram because the problems seem to consistent to be ram related (ie. Always stopping in the same rough spot during install). So I guess it could only be the power supply, mobo, or proc. I’ve never had a bad power supply or proc so I don’t know if their behavior is similar to my problem, I have had a couple bad mobos before but never with this kind of behavior, they were either DOA or had bad pci busses.

This has been a very frustrating problem and any ideas you may have would be tremendously helpful.

Thanks,
Marshall


System specs:
PIV 2.4 Prescott 533MHZ
ASUS P4P800SE Board
512 MB Crutial Ram PC3200
Some generic case from newegg with 350W equally generic PS.
Radeon 7000
 
elchorizo said:
Hey everyone,

I’m having some serious trouble putting a new machine together for my parents. I’m hoping you guys will have some insight.

Ok, heres the story. The computer is able to boot from the WinXP (I’ve also tried Win2k) CD but it hangs during install every time. It always hangs before the part where you’d format the hard disk. What happens is that the computer boots up and gets to the part where you have to choose “Enter” to install windows in this computer. Then normally it would go right away to a screen that allows you to set up partitions and format. However, it never reaches that part. When you hit enter it just hangs forever.

Earlier it wasn’t always stopping at that point. It would hang at seemingly random points (it never has got past that part though). This lead me to think that perhaps the heatsink wasn’t seated properly and therefore the proc was overheating. I reseated the heatsink and now it always gets to the part I mentioned above. However, there is now a definite error message. The installer says that windows cant find a hard disk to install to. This message has only started showing up since I reseated the heatsink.

I’ve tried several hard disks with different but very similar results with all of them. One in particular had some interesting results. The disk is kind of loud so I can really hear the spinning behavior. When you hit enter at the screen mentioned above and while you’re waiting for the format screen the disk sounds like it is trying to spin up but cant quite reach full speed. It does this a couple times and then just spins down completely and the install hangs. With this particular disk there is no error message, the install just stays on that screen till I reboot. The error screen I mentioned above happens on a couple other hard disks but not this one.

The weird spinning behavior of this hard disk (and I think others were doing the same thing although they were harder to hear) make me think that perhaps the power supply is having problems. Maybe the disk isn’t getting enough power. All that is hooked up to the power supply is the mobo, cdrom, and hard disk so I’d think there would be plenty of power to go around. Also, I’ve never had a bad power supply before so I have no idea if the behavior being exhibited could be caused by a bad power supply.

I’ve also tried 3 different optical drives, all 3 of which were known to be working.

So, what do you guys think it could be? I don’t think ram because the problems seem to consistent to be ram related (ie. Always stopping in the same rough spot during install). So I guess it could only be the power supply, mobo, or proc. I’ve never had a bad power supply or proc so I don’t know if their behavior is similar to my problem, I have had a couple bad mobos before but never with this kind of behavior, they were either DOA or had bad pci busses.

This has been a very frustrating problem and any ideas you may have would be tremendously helpful.

Thanks,
Marshall


System specs:
PIV 2.4 Prescott 533MHZ
ASUS P4P800SE Board
512 MB Crutial Ram PC3200
Some generic case from newegg with 350W equally generic PS.
Radeon 7000
Click to expand...

Try bumping the voltage up one step from stock on the vcore, also try running memtest for 30minutes, also see if you can switch the PSU is the first two ways don't work, and last but certainly not least... what's your temperatures? XP install does use a generous amount of resources at times, and the prescotts aren't exactly the coolest-running processors on the planet. :eek:
 
Interesting you mention bumping up the vcore. Last night I was looking at the voltages in the BIOS and the 12V was fluxuating a lot. It dipped into the upper 10V region a lot and the text that said the voltage turned red when it did that. Perhpas bumping vcore will supply more juice and it wont dip down so far.

As for memtest. I have ran it once before on another machine but its been a while. What should I look for? Does it tell you if you have bad memory?

I'll take the TruePower 430W PS from my main rig and try it out in this machine tonight. Hopefully something will help because this problem is so annoying.

Thanks
-Marshall
 
Sounds like a power issue to me. If you're having voltage fluxuations dropping down into the 10V range on your 12V rail when you're just in the BIOS, that's a sure sign your power supply isn't up to the task.
 
1. you said you've swapped drives, have you tried a different IDE cable?

2. Do you see the drives at POST?
 
Definetly look at swaping out that power supply if the voltage is going crazy like that.
 
Hi, yes I tried both IDE cables that came with the mobo and one of my fancy round ones that came with my lanparty. I also tried both IDE channels seperatly and together :(

I'm definatly going to try an alternative power supply tonight when I get off work. I'll let you guys know how it goes.
 
elchorizo said:
Interesting you mention bumping up the vcore. Last night I was looking at the voltages in the BIOS and the 12V was fluxuating a lot. It dipped into the upper 10V region a lot and the text that said the voltage turned red when it did that. Perhpas bumping vcore will supply more juice and it wont dip down so far.

As for memtest. I have ran it once before on another machine but its been a while. What should I look for? Does it tell you if you have bad memory?

I'll take the TruePower 430W PS from my main rig and try it out in this machine tonight. Hopefully something will help because this problem is so annoying.

Thanks
-Marshall
Click to expand...

Yes, memtest alerts you with a list of EVERY error that occurs during testing (which usually is zero, but even one can alert you to bad memory)
I'd say your best bet is swapping the PSUs, it definately sounds like a power issue
 
You might want to check your jumper settings on your hard drives. If you don't have luck with the power supply and keep getting the "can not find hard drive" error, look at the jumpers on the back of the hard drive and set them to cable select even if it is the only drive in the computer. Sometimes the master setting doesn't work.
 
Hey everyone,
The power supply was the problem. I swapped in my TruePower 430 from the AMG1080 and it worked perfectly the whole time.

So thanks everyone, I knew the [H] would come through.

-Marshall
 
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