SL-K8AN2E-GR problems

[Nuclear Ninja]

ok, i just recently built a computer. Here are my specs:

AMD 64 3200+
1 GB Patriot Ram (one stick)
SL-K8AN2E-GR mobo
Liteon DVD-RW
256 Radeon 9800 pro
Western Digital 120gb hard drive
Sound Blaster Audigy 2


So heres the problem, which many people seem to have trouble with according to this forum. After building my computer, i got it turned on succesfully and could access my bios. However, i cant get windows loaded on. Ive tried switching the cords, switching the boot device order (from hard drive, to cd-rom, to floppy drive) (cd-rom, hard drive, floppy) (floppy, cd-rom, hard drive). still nothing. my cd roms will speed up and start to access my windows cd, but then nothing ever happens. and when i try floppy boot disks, all i get is "drive I/O error." Ive tried different cords, clearing cmos, still nothing. Its been a week and im seriously out of ideas. Soltek isnt helping either, and apparantly they no longer have tech support cause all my emails are coming back to me.

thanks for the ideas.

 

[SPQQKY]

First, if you want help, it's a good idea not to tell people to "lick your butt and suck on your balls" . . . . . . . . . . . know what I mean?

Now, what interface is your drive? Is it SATA or PATA? DO you have RAID ROM enabled? What are your jumper settings on your drives? What PSU are you using?

 

[Nuclear Ninja]

Wow, yea, sorry for causing internal bleeding to anyone who saw "lick my butt and suck on my balls."


my power supply is an antec neopower 480
my interface is pata i assume, cause I know its not sata. I just say its a "Ide drive" but i dont know if that helps. Im new at this. I dont have all the lingo down.


anything else?

 

[Nuclear Ninja]

oh, and RAID is disabled both by the jumpers and Bios

 

[olds]

Ban for the OP

 

[Nuclear Ninja]

Oh god! what the fvck would I do if i got banned? all this knowledge im being given...id never get any more.. the idea almost kills me! please dont ban me! Then I cant become just like you guys! Impotent and living with my mom.

 

[olds]

Originally posted by: Nuclear Ninja
Oh god! what the fvck would I do if i got banned? all this knowledge im being given...id never get any more.. the idea almost kills me! please dont ban me! Then I cant become just like you guys! Impotent and living with my mom.

Nobody responds to you because nobody likes you.

 

[mechBgon]

Some ideas...

1) raise RAM voltage to 2.7 volts

2) pull the jumper cap off your WD drive's jumper block if it has its own IDE cable. That sets it to Single-Drive mode and is the prime suspect here.

3) disable all the onboard mobo features that the Audigy2 ZS duplicates (Firewire, MIDI, Gameport, audio)

4) hit the Secure Is Good link in my sig so you know some pitfalls to avoid as far as worm attack goes. A fresh WinXP installation will "take candy from strangers" and get infected by worms if you don't take countermeasures.

 

[Nuclear Ninja]

Hey thanks,

jesus christ, its just a signiture, and its from the Team America Theme song, its not like im really telling you guys to "lick my butt and suck my balls...well some of you i am, but not mechBgon. But obviously, Signitures mean more to you people then they do to me, so ill change it.


anyways, i tried changing the voltage and removing the jumper, but so far no luck, however i havent had a chance to try disabling all the stuff on the motherboard. thanks for the reply and ill let you know if it worked or not.

 

[mechBgon]

Maybe the hard drive is simply faulty. There's Western Digital diagnostic utilities here if you wanted to make a diagnostic floppy and run the extended test overnight. The Disk I/O Error message, does that come up during Windows Setup, or prior to that?

 

[Nuclear Ninja]

it comes up when it tries to access the boot disk. I hear the A: drive kick up and make typical god awful a: drive noises, and then it says "Drive I/O Error. So to really answer your question, its before windows setup.

But even if It couldn't find the hard drive, it should still be able to boot up a cd shouldnt it? It just wouldnt have anywhere to install anything to.

 

[mechBgon]

I was looking at the newegg photos and specs and I see that this board dangles one regular ATA fitting off of the Promise SATA controller as a bonus item. It's the one down low on the board by the floppy drive plug. If your drive's on that plug, then try hooking it up to the board's "native" ATA plugs that are up by the ATX power cable instead.

The ATA plug that comes from the Promise controller could probably be made to work with some BIOS adjustments, but I think all the advantages are with the native ATA controllers (not PCI-bound, more straightforward, two drives per cable are ok).

/ long shot

 

[mechBgon]

Originally posted by: Nuclear Ninja
it comes up when it tries to access the boot disk. I hear the A: drive kick up and make typical god awful a: drive noises, and then it says "Drive I/O Error. So to really answer your question, its before windows setup.

But even if It couldn't find the hard drive, it should still be able to boot up a cd shouldnt it? It just wouldnt have anywhere to install anything to.

Oh, gotcha. Yeah, it ought to be giving up on the floppy after trying it, and going on to the optical drive and finding the bootable CD and carrying on with that. On the tangent of Things That Make My Optical Drive Not Work, which you may have tried these...

1) try a new IDE cable, preferably a flat 80-wire one

2) as a fact-finding step, try a different optical drive to see if that works

3) make sure your Windows CD isn't dirty or, mmm, "non-bootable" by nature

4) I haven't checked out the Neopower very closely, but do they have a Fan-Only line like the TruePowers? If so, you wouldn't want the optical drive on that line by accident. Yeah, I'm reaching a bit here...

If any other brainstorms come along, I'll post them too.

 

[Nuclear Ninja]

OK,

I've tried different cables, ive avoided the input at the bottom like the plague, i checked the cd on another computer and it booted up fine, I believe the neo power does have fan specific lines, and those are all plugged into fans, not drives, and i tried a different cd drive and nothing. Im thinking the mobo may just need to be sent back.

I appreciate all this help though. Keep em coming. Ive still yet to try changing the mobo setting with the sound and what not like you siggested in the BIOS because im at work right now and not able to get to my new computer.

 

[mechBgon]

The voltage suggestion and the disabling of onboard stuff wasn't really aimed directly at the problem of the board not booting the optical drive, it was just bonus suggestions. I was putting most of my hopes on the WD wanting to be Single Drive, since they're so fussy about that, but looks like it wasn't the core problem this time.

If you go into the BIOS, or can see it on the POST screen... does the board recognize the optical drive as being present? You might go in and check that all the IDE positions are set to AUTO... except resetting the CMOS would've already done that... yeah, maybe the board is faulty. Hopefully your vendor is good about RMAs if it comes to that.

 

[Nuclear Ninja]

Yea, it sees all of the drives just fine. *frustration*

I seriously have like the worst luck ever with electronics. none of this surpises me at all. I consider it a miracle that it even turns on, hahaha.