PLease please help a newbie with little time

[ucdoc]

Hi, this is my first time posting here and I am need of help. I am a hematologist oncologist in training and with a rigorous work schedule and foolishly decided to build a new computer for the first time and I have hit a road block.

components are new mostly and include:

p4p800 deluxe MB with latest bios 1010 preloaded
kingston 3500 ram 1 gig kit for a 2.4 intel processor
ibm and western HD's, dvdrom toshiba and burner by lite on.
radeon 9700 pro video card
windows xp professional

now here is the problem. I assembled everything yesterday and computer loaded just fine, even loaded windows xp and was at the desktop. I then decided to change the hd master slave settings. i have the hd's connected from ide 1 with one master and one slave. THe second ide connects the dvd rom and burner. Anyway after changing the setting I noticed:

-delay at asus mb ai series intro screen
-then the usual via tech screen 9which has allows showed no detection of devices).
-cmos time date error (in instances after clearing the cmos)
-then get a message saying setup is inspecting hardware configuration with very long delay.
-then I get to a windows setup screen and after another long wait I get the choices to format hd, install xp, repair etc. (this is because I have to boot from the windows xp cd otherwise I am stuck at the boot up from bootable source screen)
-I have formated hds, installed just one, installed xp a gizillion times, and persistenly after a xp installation reboot instead of going into xp I get right back to this same cycle. If i dont have the xp disk in it asks for a boot disk
-in the bios everything looks dandy, ide drives are all properally configured.

I dont know what to do, I have a huge grand rounds to preset in three weeks and no computer. I respect you guys that put these things together. I think writing chemotherapy orders for cancer pt's is a lot easier !!!

I thank you in advance for the help you can give a first timer.

 

[paperfist]

Welcome to the forums

After reading your post it just seems to me like the jumpers are on wrong. I'd double check those and make sure the jumpers and cables are firmly seated. Any reason why you changed the drives around?

Seems like you have everything setup right with the hard drives on IDE0 and the opticals on the IDE1 channel. Most IDE cables are now notched so you can't put them on backwards so that likely isn't the problem. Are you using Cable Select or the Master/Slave pin set?

 

[lenjack]

Agreed...jumper settings can be extremely confusing.

 

[Slogun]

To problem-solve you might try just hooking up one master hard drive to begin with and add a slave later.

Remember, the master drive goes on the farthest end of the IDE cable while the secondary (slave) hard drive goes in the middle of the cable.