Need Help Building First PC

[jononew22]

Hey My name's Jon , I recently ordered my computer...here are the parts.

DFI LanParty nF4 Ultra-D
AMD 3200+ Athlon64 socket 939
Twin MOS dual channel 512x2 DDR PC-3200
Rosewill Radeon x800xl PCI Express
ViewSonic 17" LCD display Monitor 8ms
LiteOn combodrive cdrw+dvd-rom
Powersupply...Frtrn 530W
HD 160gb 7200rpm SATA western digital
Windows XP professional

I've put all the parts into the motherboard correctly (Or so I think) and I am still having trouble booting up...The first time I booted up it went all the way to the spot where it says "windows xp ready to install" or something like that...and it said press enter to continue and I did and nothing happened. So i turned it off and tried again. The next time it didnt get to that part. It just got to the black screen that shows you all the stuff you have in it. at the top it says something like PCI devices and at the bottom it said CMOS backup...OK! or something to that effect. It would not go beyond that point...AND NOW *breate in* The monitor will not even recognize the video card. "No Signal" message comes up. I also have 4 red LEDs on the bottom left of my motherboard and 2 orange ones in 2 other places (Next to the Ram and one near the chipset/bios area). I'm not sure what to do now...I have a SATA HD and my friend said he had trouble installing windows xp on it (this is just an add on for anyone who knows anything about that). so anyone with any suggestions please write and tell me. Thanks

 

[anarchyreigns]

Flash to the latest bios and try installing windows with only one stick in slot 2 first. Also, take a look at DFI Street for additional tips.

http://www.dfi-street.com/forum/

 

[cptCuervo]

Reseat the cards, and check all the cables (sometimes SATA cables can cause problems in my experience)

To get WIN to install on your SATA drive you will have to:

-make sure your BIOS is set to boot from the CDROM

-Boot from the XP CD and put in the SATA driver disk (not the RAID driver disk) that came with your Motherboard

-Press F6 (when prompted at the bottom of the WINXP install screen) to load the SATA drivers

?? Not sure if this answers your question ??

 

[anarchyreigns]

Originally posted by: cptCuervo


To get WIN to install on your SATA drive you will have to:

-make sure your BIOS is set to boot from the CDROM

-Boot from the XP CD and put in the SATA driver disk (not the RAID driver disk) that came with your Motherboard

-Press F6 (when prompted at the bottom of the WINXP install screen) to load the SATA drivers

He doesn't have to do any of that...he has the nForce4 chipset.

 

[gridiron123]

Hey guys, I've got Jons computer here, I was over at his house trying to get it to go and didn't have any luck, heres the problem.

We got the bootup problem solved, but now we cannot get windows XP pro to install for anything. It keeps crashing during installation. We've used both a XP Pro with SP2 install disc, along with my plain old XP Pro installation disc. We've tried several times, the installation either hanged with a BSOD, restarted by itself (Heat is not the issue, monitored the temps in cmos very well, never above 45c). The last time, I did a slow format on the drive and after a 100% it reported that there was an error and the drive could not be formated, and that it could possibly be damaged. Ran chkdsk, found error, redid a quick format, BSOD again once it started copying stuff to the hard drive from the CD to begin installation. Is the Harddrive faulty, need to flash the bios? Any known problems with these boards relating to this?

 

[everman]

Assuming the mobo is mounting properly (it seems like a lot people mess up there for some reason), I would try just one stick of ram and see what happens.

 

[gridiron123]

All of this happened with one single stick in the #2 slot. And what do you mean about it mounting, the physical mounting of it in the case you mean? Its solid.

 

[rise]

try post 15 here.

have you already loaded optimized in bios? memtested your sticks? i just do a pass each before install to make sure, takes about 20 mins a pass, worth checking out.

the post above helped alot of people over there i hear so its worth a shot. theres alot of good info over there.

edit= i see the 1 stick now. that ram should be fine but you want to eliminate it as a problem. also i think he meant not shorting on a stand off or something

btw, nice rig

 

[ProviaFan]

Are you loading SATA drivers from the floppy that presumably came with such drivers on it? IIRC, press F6 right after the Windows install first boots up, when it tells you to do so at the bottom of the screen.

 

[rise]

windows has its own sata drivers, you only need that for raid.

 

[gridiron123]

I'm reading that 15th post over at the DFI forum now...I'll try some of that stuff and see what happens. I haven't ran memtest, but I'll do that also.

 

[Buz2b]

I'd try the slow format again and see if it returns the same errors. This could confirm either the HDD is faulty or cables/connections. Try changing out the cables (probably not that but just in case) and see what happens.

 

[rise]

i forgot the obligatory "you have all 4 power connectors in, right?" question.

 

[gridiron123]

wtf, theres 4? Theres 2 hooked up, all 4 have to be connected? Why is it even booting if it needs that many and only half are connected?

 

[EglsFly]

1.Check the CPU heatsink for proper installation.
2.Shouldn't the memory be in slot DIMM1?
3.Check that all the power plugs are installed on the mb.
4.RMA the MB.

 

[rise]

yep, 4
the 24 pin, the atx 4 pin, the fdd (above the top pci-e 16x) and the 4 pin molex or HDD like one (above the chipset). it isn't absolutely necessary as i ran my board for a few days before i realized that that what was the manual says. its hard to understand a bit.

edit=btw what bios do you have? and i assume thats a venice?

 

[gridiron123]

Man thats weird as heck. I just hooked them up...I'll have to retry installing windows tomorrow and see what happens.

 

[rise]

if it is a venice and by chance you still have the 1.25 bios it might also be an issue. you should have the 3.10

http://www.dfi.com.tw/Support/Download/...CATEGORY_TYPE=LP&STATUS_FLAG=A&SITE=NA

 

[rise]

Originally posted by: gridiron123
Man thats weird as heck. I just hooked them up...I'll have to retry installing windows tomorrow and see what happens.

i was afraid to plug them in first, lol, didn't want to fry the board. one guy said he had a fan plugged into the 4 pin.

 

[gridiron123]

Checked the drive with the Western Digital drive diagnostic software, did the quick and long checks, wrote byte zero to the entire drive. Just tried installing windows and I'm getting a BSOD before I can even get to the license agreement. Its got the normal garb and then this: Stop: 0x00000007e (0xc0000005, 0x8080a464, 0xf89810AC, 0xf8980DA8) Googled and found nothing.

I'm going to go through all the options in CMOS and change them according to what is reccomended @ DFI street and see if that changes anything.

 

[MobiusPizza]

Originally posted by: gridiron123
Checked the drive with the Western Digital drive diagnostic software, did the quick and long checks, wrote byte zero to the entire drive. Just tried installing windows and I'm getting a BSOD before I can even get to the license agreement. Its got the normal garb and then this: Stop: 0x00000007e (0xc0000005, 0x8080a464, 0xf89810AC, 0xf8980DA8) Googled and found nothing.

I'm going to go through all the options in CMOS and change them according to what is reccomended @ DFI street and see if that changes anything.

I googled and found something:

http://www.alegsa.com.ar/Visitas/i55/Pci%20sys%20error.php

That's the error code for pci.sys error...
hm Is there anything in your PCI channels that might be imcopatible?

 

[gridiron123]

Hmm...interesting. The only thing in a slot is the graphics card. Nothin else. And its the rosewill x800xl mentioned above. Not anything old or outdated by anymeans.

edit: after revewing some more microsoft techincal bullitens it looks like I need to run memtest86 as mentioned earlier on this ram dimm and see what it comes up with.

 

[gridiron123]

Alright, I had tried going through installation one more time after changing the bios according to the directions and DFI street. Now I get past the license agreement, quick formatted the drive and begin copying stuff down when I get this:

ntfs.sys address F814BFE6 base at F8122000, date stamp 41107eea

Stop: 0x000000024 (0x001902fe, 0xf803D2D8, 0xF803CFD4, 0xF814BFE6)

Going to reboot and run memtest next.

 

[rise]

what sata slot you running in? maybe try a different slot as thats a hdd error isn't it?

 

[gridiron123]

Its in the first one. I'll switch it to another and try it again and see what goes on. Memtest is clean, ran it compeltely through twice with no errors.