I think I made a major boo-boo

[eyncydious]

Ok, long story short, I decided to upgrade my RAM, video card and hard drive, due to some serious and lengthy hard drive access I had happening while gaming. Now I'm no professional A++ guy, but I can manage my way around inside my own box.

I ran a ram test that I downloaded from the windows site and it resulted in no errors. So naturally i though that perhaps I had a bad platter in my hard drive. So I elected to upgrade the ram along with the hard drive, which then led me to a video card update, which then led to a new power supply.

So I get the PSU in the mail and it's dead from the start. Living here in the UK (unfortunately stationed here for too long now) I was forced to buy a 700w PSU on the economy. Little pricey, but it works at least. I installed it with zero errors, powered on and viola.

System specs:
Dell Dimension 9100
NVIDIA GEFORCE 8800 GTS (upgraded from ATI x850XT)
3GB of DDR2 4200 ram (upgraded from factory default of 1GB)
pentium 4 w HT (next to be upgraded)
700w PSU (upgraded from factory default of 375w)

After installing the new hardware everything worked great, except my ide controller now woulnd't recognize my two cd drives. After fighting with this thing for hours, switching jumpers, going to a USB cd and still get a "no boot device available" error, I thoguht perhaps a BIOS flash was in order. No matter what I tried, I couldn't get the system to boot off the internal cd (because it never recognized it) nor would it access the USB cd even though it saw it in BIOS.

So I downloaded the latest BIOS from dell and flashed it from within windows. Now, the system turns on for about a second, then powers off and then powers back on after about a 3 second delay. No video is displayed and the cpu fan engages in all out whaling mode and the system emits a series of grinding beeps in a series of two bursts, with three chimes in each burst.

Now I'm deathly afraid that all the new hardware I just bought may be damaged along with the new drive and my old drive. Did I in-fact do something that could have likely damaged the hardware of the machine? My gut tells me that BIOS flash would not result in hardware damage, but it makes no sense why the bios won't at least display a screen and tell me there are errors. At this point, my stomach is on the floor as I'm seeing the $800 I just spent go up in flames.

I guess my next move, if I can't recover from this, will be to buy a new motherboard and CPU, which I had planned to do anyway, but there's no sense in it now if the hardware I just bought is fried...

Any help is greatly appreciated...

 

[wwswimming]

... but I can manage my way around inside my own box.

sounds like something from a Craigslist personal. :Q

one thing i've observed about computers is that they have
the ability to consume vast amounts of personal (and business)
time. and that they have the ability to inspire one to take the
Lord's name in Vain.

not that the Lord doesn't have broad shoulders, but - YOUR
time is precious.

from what you've described, this situation sounds like it
could consume a lot of time.

i would go for the new motherboard. also to take care that
the Dell case doesn't have standoff's in non-standard locations,
last thing you need is to short out a new MB.

 

[Billb2]

Originally posted by: eyncydious
3GB of DDR2 4200 ram (upgraded from factory default of 1GB)

You could either substitute one old piece at a time, or put all the old stuff in and substitute one new piece at a time. The second will be easier to trouble shoot if you can get a post and boot.

I know Dell used to use propritary PSUs. Check the pinouts onthe new and old PSUs to be sure they are the same. There are sites that list the Dell pinouts.

Mixed memory in a No-No. One set is dual channel, the other isn't...and are the SPD timings the same? Do the above with one stick only, in the slot closet to the CPU.

Slow amd methodical...that's the ticket.

 

[JackMDS]

Welcome to AT's Hardware Forums.

As suggest above.

Put the system the old way, and start with installing one piece at the time.

Do not continue to the next step until it words well at each step.

Starting with:

1. As is (the old system) with New flashed BIOS

2. Power supply

3. RAM

4. Video

 

[Zepper]

Yup, making sure your Dell mobo has standard ATX connector pinout is the first step in upgrading the PSU. There are adapters out there to adapt standard PSU to the Dell pinout, but damage can happen if that was not done to begin with. Most recent Dell use standard pinout now. Should have been a no-brainer in the first place. But they wanted to get every cent out of the replacement parts biz they could... All it got them was a big shot of bad will.

Good to remember that the big box pushers like Dell, HP/Compaq, et al. can afford to do things in a proprietary way - never assume that things are standard. The connector may look the same, but is it really...

.bh.

 

[MagnusTheBrewer]

Don't forget you can return to the original BIOS by using the CMOS reset jumper on your MB.