HELP! Just built fancy new PC and not posting

[Winjer23]

I just built a new PC, AMD 64 3200+, the MSI Neo Platinum mobo, in a Thermaltake Xaser 3 case.

I harvested some parts from an old PC:
430 Watt Antec PS
3.5" Floppy

I got some new, fancy parts:
AMD 64 3200+
200 GB SATA HDD
SATA DVD/RW/CD/RW
2 512 MB sticks of DDR 3200
GEForce 6800GT

The darn thing won't post. I hit the power button and everything lights up, drives light up (long light on floppy), and all the fans go happily. However, there is a persistent beep! It is just one long tone. It sounds awful. On one bootup, the thing turned itself off during the beeping. Nothing appears on my monitor during this process.

I checked and re-seated the CPU. I tried RAM from my old PC which has been working fine. I even unplugged the SATA CD/DVD drive (maybe it only wants SATA HDDs) and some fans (free up some power).

The HDD is unformatted. I just want to get to the BIOS so I can set to boot from CD and use XP to format everything and install itself.

Any thoughts? My only code reading (one long beep) says it's a RAM problem, but I don't buy it since my old RAM is good 2700 DDR.

What else could it be?

Thanks! I am very frustrated. I have built several PCs before with no trouble ever getting the BIOS to show.

 

[Looney]

Yep, sounds like it's the ram. Have you tried the ram in another slot? Sometimes it needs to be seated really firmly.

 

[Winjer23]

Okay... got it to post.

Whew! Lucky me. Now I just need to figure out how to format a 200 GB SATA HDD in XP. Argh.

 

[Looney]

Just install and format the HDD normally... you'll only get 130gb. But when you install windows and SP1 (you NEED this), you can then use Partition Magic to retrieve the other 70gb back.

 

[mechBgon]

Also, if you don't have a hardware firewall keeping the worms away from your raw WinXP installation, then it would be a good idea to keep the computer's network cable unplugged until you can get ZoneAlarm installed on it as a stopgap measure while you're getting your antivirus software updated and getting Windows patched at Windows Update. You can get the free ZoneAlarm basic firewall software here.

If you have a fast connection and a CD burner or a pretty big USB memory drive, you might want to download and burn the whole Service Pack 2 installer for future use: linkie

There are some more security resources (and driver links and stuff) here. I recommend getting the latest version of Microsoft Baseline Security Analyzer to help identify less-obvious stuff that you would want to correct.

 

[KenSr]

More good help from mechBgon