new motherboard woes

[Sylvanas]

seems nothing will go right for me... ok so i just got my Aopen ak79d-400vn (nforce2 ultra 400) well i installed it, and everything seems to be in the correct places (except maybe these 1 pin connections eg. power switch connecter) i boot it up and everything is incredibably slow for the POST screen to finnish it takes 3 mins (obviously something wrong) so, i think to myself, "lets reformat", so i put in windows and it comes up saying "you have no hard drives connected" i used aopens ide cables then changed them, still nothing, the molex connections are fine. so the thing is running without a hard drive though on post it does recognise the name of the HDD. but i have 2 HDD's you see and it cant find te other. any ideas?! need help.

 

[Insane3D]

It sounds like you have your HD's jumpered incorrectly so they are both trying to be the master. Do you know how to set the jumpers on your HD's? If you want..I can help you out. First thing I would do is connect ONLY the HD you want to install Windows on. Worry about the second one later....

 

[Sylvanas]

ok ive done that. it went into and out of post very quickly as normal so now do i tell it to look for cd first then reformat and load windows?

 

[Insane3D]

One sec...lemme load up the manual for your board....

 

[Sylvanas]

anyone?

 

[Insane3D]

Sorry for the delay...I'm at work. I had to d/l the manual and read through it real quick.

Ok, go to the "Advanced Bios Features" menu. Set the boot order as "Floppy" 1st, "CDROM" 2nd, and "Hard Drive" 3rd.

 

[Sylvanas]

yeah sorry i was taken offline from an incoming call (im on dial up) and i didnt get to read your post, so i reformatted and installed windows. im in now, it seems a bit laggy to me, should still follow through from what you said above? (sorry for the inconvenience)

 

[Insane3D]

First, what OS are you using? I would follow this procedure, and I'm assuming you're using XP.

1. Install DirectX 9.0b, reboot as prompted.
2. Install the latest nForce chipset drivers (not the ones on the CD that comes with the board), reboot as prompted.
3. Install the latest drivers for your 9600 Pro, from ATI's site. The latest version is the Catalyst 4.6 IIRC. Again, reboot as prompted.
4. Install any remaining drivers for your hardware that need installing
5. Hit Windows Update and D/L all the OS patches and updates.

That should get you all up and running properly. You are probably having laggy performance now because the OS doesn't have the chipset drivers installed, and is operating in a safe mode of sorts. Once all the drivers get loaded up, you should be running much more smoothly. I'll be online for a couple more hours at least if you need any more help.

 

[Sylvanas]

well after a whole day downloading drivers its running excellently! in fact i got a 1000 point increae in 3dmark :beer: but i would like to connect my other drive since before i changed motherboards i put all my stuff onto it, how would i go about that (its just disconnected at the moment) right now my primary master is my good HDD and my secondary master is my CD drive (i have no primary/secondary slaves) does this have a bearing on things? if i want to setup my other HDD what would i set these to and how? also i have 5.1 surround and my rear speakers arent working, i have the jacks in the right sockets (i think) but no sound is coming from them. now those 1 pin connections (from the case to the mobo) had 2 connecters labled "speaker" does this have any bearing on my rear speakers not working? since im not sure they are in the correct places. (i have installed audio drivers)

thanks so very much for your time Insane3D

 

[Insane3D]

Ok, I would suggest making the second HD the master on the secondary IDE channel, and the CD drive the slave to the secondary HD. Do you know how to set the drives jumpers correctly?

As for the audio, the connectors labeled speaker are for the system speaker, the little speaker in your case, and have no bearing on your Audio in windows. The problem you are having with the audio is normal, and is fixable. If you look at your board, you have three connectors...a green one (front out), and blue one (Line In), and a pink one (Microphone). The ACL650E sound chip on your board is programable. If you want to run 5.1 speakers, it remaps the blue line out port so it becomes the rear out port, and remaps the pink microphone jack to be the center/sub jack. It's sometimes tricky to do this with the standard nForce audio drivers, so I would suggest you go here and download the latest drivers from Realtek. Make sure you get the ones for XP. The driver pack is about 10mb, so it might take you a little while to d/l.

In the meantime, you can try this, but it doesn't always work. First, open up the control panel, and choose "Sounds and Audio Devices". In there, click on the "Advanced" button in the speaker settings box. In the window that comes up, choose 5.1 speakers. Hit apply or ok and then reboot the system. See if the audio works correctly then. I'll keep an eye on this thread if you need anymore help.

 

[Sylvanas]

right, so i connect up the other Hdd, go into the bios set it as master of secondary IDE and set cd to slave of secondary? hard drive jumpers? i havent paid any heed to Hdd jumpers whats your advice here/ how to set them?

As for the 5.1, im downloading the realtek drivers now and ill play around with it once ive installed them :thumbsup: and yes in the control pannel i had it set at 5.1

 

[Insane3D]

Ok, you need to set the jumpers in the back of the drives, CD and HD so they will be master and slave. Let me explain a little. You should never need to set which drives are master and slave in the bios, it's something that the drives themselves do depending on how they are jumpered in the back. The reason you probably had trouble when both HD's were hooked up was because they were both jumpered as masters, so they were fighting over the master channel, so to speak. That is why it took a long time to sense them, and the bios didn't see them.

Can you wait a few hours? I'm @ work now, and it would be easier if I just shot some pics of HD's and CDROMS jumpers and how you set them. I'll be home by around 7:30am EST...it's almost 5am now...

 

[Sylvanas]

yeah sure, take your time. its getting quite late where i am now (australia) so ill check this thread tomorrow morning. cheers