Baffled with new build

PinkFloyd

PinkFloyd

PinkFloyd

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Joined
21 Sep 2005
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Bradley Stoke, Bristol
Building a pc for a mate, main use is uni work, which involves various writeups, research and some 3d work. Spec as follows:

G0 stepping Q6600
Asrock 4CoreDual-SATA2
2gig value ram
X300se
200g Sata harddrive
sata dvdrw
Antec NSK 4480B
-with 380W Earth Watts psu.


Everything was going well, booted first time checked everything in bios, dead quiet system.
Start installing XP, get to where setup needs to restart the system, hit enter to restart rather than waiting 15 seconds, system posts, and just hangs on a blank screen.

Tried various things with boot priority, reset the bios and nothing. Won't load anything from the harddrive, try to go and boot from the disc, it pops up saying "scanning hardware" and just hangs on a blank screen again.


Completely lost as to what is wrong with it, one thought was the bios might not support g0 stepping chips, but can't find anything to confirm that, and I wouldn't have expected a windows install to got as far or maybe the system not even booting if that was the case.


Anyone got any pointers of things I may have missed?
 
Aw was hoping for 2 helpfull posts then :(

Going to try an IDE dvd drive and maybe an ide harddrive and see if that gets anywhere. ot other ram I can try again, don't have another graphics card I can test with at the moment though I don't think. *rummages*
 
Best thing to do it take everything but the CPU, RAM and GFX off of the system and see if it posts. If it doesn't yuo have found the problem. Then add the HD back and then the DVD drive.
 
Did you have to do the F6 thing at windows install to install the Sata Drivers? (Not sure if that's needed on the Asrock 4CoreDual-SATA2, but thought I'd mention it as I had this problem with a DFI board once).
 
Had very similar with my q6600 (go) in a dfi 975x, turns out that the board just didn't work well with the cpu at all kept crashing on vista and xp installs. Eventually with 1gb ram as opposed to 4gb and losening up the ram timings I got xp installed. flashed the bios to the latest and its been good as gold ever since!

Check the motherboard vendors website to check for any fixes that mention you cpu or ram configurations.
 
Sure that mobo works with that CPU? I'd sell it, get a P35 board instead. There is very limited clocking with those boards anyway, so it will limit what the quad will get up to.
 
That board is £43.46inc vat and claims to be able to support the quad, the cheapest p35 board is far more than that sometimes cash is more of an issue than, can you get an extra .6 ghz out of a chip that is fast enough stock?

Mine was truly a battle to get working and im aware that the 975x is a pretty shoddy chipset but it was cheap and eventually pulled through... I hope yours does too! Good luck!

BTW checked the ASRock site and it seems the board had issues with ATI cards although it doesn't mention the x300 spacifically I would hazard a guess that the x300 may use a similar if not the same core as one of the affected cards.
 
Thanks guys, got a few things to try now atleast. Think I have a spare card I can try out somewhere, might end up picking up one of the ocuk IP35 boards.
 
I'm looking at installing vista on my main rig :p

Mainly as I can install raid drivers from usb rather than requiring a floppy like XP :D
 
Seems I have found the problem.

Installed vista 64bit business without an issue last night with some spare hardware in it. So its not the motherboard. Ran alrite with a gig of DDR1 ram, a 20gig 5400rpm harddrive, and a 4mb ATI AGP card.
Swapped back to the X300se I had in there, no boot. Problem apparently solved. Card worked fine a month ago in another rig, so its either died since, has a conflict with this motherboard, or its a dodgy PCIe slot on the motherboard.

Time to get around to installing on the harddrive he is meant to be having :) - and then a graphics upgrade as soon as I get a replacement card. Doubt I'll even find drivers for this old ATI card, not even sure of the model.
 
This is getting progressively more confusing.

Swapped out the graphics card and went to install again...
It doesn't seem to like the harddrive I have either, vista won't install onto the 200gig 7200.10 drive I have. tried it in both sata and sata 2 mode.
The odd thing is without a problem, I installed vista onto this drive on my main rig. It worked great.
Thinking maybe sata harddrives don't work, I tried one of my new 7200.11 drives, vista installed on it fine.

Strange conflict after strange conflict, I've not been so lost since I first got my DFI Ultra-D a few years back :p

I had another of these motherboards in the summer and it was flawless, yet this thing seems more fussy than an Ultra-D on a release bios :eek:
 
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