Problems with PC assembly

[rozeni]

I am trying to assemble new PC, so there is nothing isntalled yet on the hard drive. The motherboard is SOYO K7-ADA. I've connected all the components. When I turn power on, it detects CPU and memory and the fans and hard drive are spinning. Then it properly detects all IDE devices. However, after this the screen goes blank and cursor is blinking in the upper left corner. Moreover, the light on the floppy drive stays on. I did make sure that floppy is connected properly i.e. red side of the cable goes to pin 1. I've tried just about everything that I could think of without much success.

I would appreciate any help

 

[Nothinman]

My first guesses would be either the floppy cable or drive is bad (or if there's a disk in it, it could be bad). Do you have another drive or cable you could try or can you boot from CD, which would probably be better anyway.

 

[bozo1]

Can you boot with a bootable floppy disk? What you described is common if there is something with the boot record on the hard drive.

 

[DaiShan]

for the floppy drive problem, I would first try a new ribbon cable, then try a new drive, for the blank scree, that is completely normal, you don't have anything at all on the hard disk.

 

[Bleep]

Floppy drive light on all the time!!! I dont care how many times you have checked the cable it is not plugged right. Is it plugged into the very end plug on the cable? that is after the twist?? Check both ends it may be plugged into the MB backwards. Turn it around it does not hurt anything if it is in backwards. Some floppys do NOT have pin one next to the power lead. When this is the case a keyless cable needs to be used or the key ground off of the plug.

Bleep

 

[JustinLerner]

Floppy LED is one problem that should be fixed by plugging in the cable correctly (each end).

Blinkling cursor is normal if there is no OS (DOS or otherwise) on the HD if the graphic display is bypassed upon boot.

 

[tallest1]

bump. A friend of mine is having the same problem

 

[zbalat]

Once your floppy is fixed, you need to boot from a boot disk to format the hard drive before you can install an OS.

How to install windows

How to format

 

[tallest1]

heres the problem though. The computer refuses to boot from the floppy or CDROM.

The computer posts and doesn't show a floppy fail error. It just posts, and goes to a blinking cursor on the top left corner of the screen. However, in this case, the floppy light isn't staying on (which is a good thing, I know)

And the HD we're using as the main HD was used for his old computer but it has Windows 98 and worked just fine before I de-assembled it.

 

[zbalat]

Is the boot sequence in the BIOS set to boot from the A drive first?

I just upgraded my mom's computer with a new CPU and MB. I had to reformat her hard drive to avoid the blinking cursor (which did happen). Once the format was complete everything went smooth as silk.

I am sure that you know what you are doing but sometimes it's the obvious things that we overlook. If the computer will not boot from the floppy once the floppy is set as the first boot option in the BIOS then you may have a bad MB, faulty A drive or the cables to the A drive may not be installed correcty (see posts below from Justinlerner and Bleep).

I have done what you are doing right now (upgrade MB/CPU) several times and have never failed to figure out what was wrong. Sometimes it took days but I always got it to work.

PM me with more specific questions if you have any.

Good luck.

 

[rozeni]

My problem got resolved after I've use a newer video card. I guess the card from my old computer was too old. Other suggestions that I've gotten while trying to resolve the problem were:

To make sure that your video card is properly seated in the AGP slot. As I was told sometimes you have to push it pretty hard.

It could be a memory issue. You should go to BIOS and set latency etc. to auto.

Good luck.