New pc wont boot

GeForce · 2 Jul 2006 at 15:04

My mate has just built his first pc and after assembly he has found that it fails to boot up. The motherboard (a DFI Lanparty UT SLi-D) shows 3 diagnostic lights and beeps in a 1sec on, 3secs off pattern. Any ideas as to the cause of this? If it helps i'll include the system specs:

AMD 3700+ (stock HS&F)
DFI Lanparty UT SLi-D
XFX GeForce 6800XT (256mb DDR3)
Hiper 580W Modular
512MB Matrix PC3200 (DDR400)

Thanks for any help

Jon

Street · 2 Jul 2006 at 15:10

I think that beep is a RAM problem... Might be wrong though. Any chance of trying a different set in the board?

Might be worth posting over at www.dfi-street.com as well. They've helped me no end over there when I've had any problems with my Ultra-D

Johny Boy · 2 Jul 2006 at 15:10

Accourding to my dfi ultra-d manual 3 lights means it's cpu related. Do a search online for the full manual and you should be able to track down the beep codes easily.

xirokx · 2 Jul 2006 at 15:15

AFAIK 3 lights means cpu is OK its checking the RAM....therefore it must be a prob with the RAM...

tell him to check if the RAM is in the correct slot...

GeForce · 2 Jul 2006 at 15:22

xirokx said:
tell him to check if the RAM is in the correct slot...

Im not very experienced with DFI motherboards so, which slot should it be in because the manual that came with it was very poor.

Thanks for the replies

xirokx · 2 Jul 2006 at 15:41

into DIMM1 the first slot at the top of the board from what I can tell.....

tell him to reset the CMOS as well before switching it on....

Oh and btw does he has 1 stick of 512mb or 2 x 256mb?

Please confirm...

GeForce · 2 Jul 2006 at 15:57

xirokx said:
Oh and btw does he has 1 stick of 512mb or 2 x 256mb?
Please confirm...

It's 1x 512 MB thanks for the help, we've tried it in slot 1 and 3

are there any jumpers to set for single channel?

dante6491 · 2 Jul 2006 at 16:00

My DFi only lieks the ramm in the orange ones for some reason... might help i dont know.

xirokx · 2 Jul 2006 at 16:02

so does it work in slot 1? or slot 3? if not try 2 then 4?

but ensure everytime you change the slot you put the RAM into you have to reset the CMOS otherwise it wont work...

go to page 29 of the manual....its there clearly...

if after resetting the cmos it still wont work it maybe that the board does not like his RAM....

Scottie2004 · 2 Jul 2006 at 16:05

Here's an odd one. I had the same problem with an Abit board, continued beeps. Turns out it was the keyboard connection. I had connected a wireless desktop and the mobo wouldn't post because the connection between the transmitter and keyb was not correctly configured. Try a wired keyboard / mouse?

Street · 2 Jul 2006 at 16:07

Have you flashed the BIOS to the latest one? Let him borrow your RAM to boot the board up and flash the BIOS, then see if his RAM will work after that. I had no end of hassle with the BIOS my Ultra-D shipped with, but updating it fixed all my problems

Also those boards are picky about which RAM goes in which slots... If it doesn't work in the orange slots, try it in the yellow ones

Johny Boy · 3 Jul 2006 at 13:06

Accourding to your manual which you should download rather then have me read it for you;

Diagnostic Lights

4 lit = system start up
3 lit = cpu detected
2 lit = dram detected
1 lit = vga detected
0 lit = system boot up

1 long beep = dram problems

try putting them just in the orange or just in the purple. reset your cmos and maybe use the safe boot jumper.

boxley · 4 Jul 2006 at 18:47

I'd like to say thank you very much to all the people who have replyed to this post as you have helped me out immensly. It was the ram causing the problem and after "borrowing" some of GeForce's ram its working fine..... ALTHOUGH i now have another problem:

When it boots up it is set to boot from hdd and other boot options are enabled, every time it fails to boot from the hdd and will only boot off a cd. However when it says press any key to boot from cd, if left it will then boot fine from hdd. Any ideas as to the cause of this? It is an old hard drive (1.5gb) because im poor i cannot currently afford to get another one.

Any help give is greatly appreciated

Thanks

Ben

Street · 4 Jul 2006 at 18:51

Are there any other hard drives plugged in?

boxley · 4 Jul 2006 at 18:56

Street said:
Are there any other hard drives plugged in?

Nope, just the one hdd, one cd rom and a fdd

Street · 4 Jul 2006 at 22:14

Will it boot from the drive if nothing else is plugged in? Have you updated the BIOS?

eggcup · 5 Jul 2006 at 00:24

When i first bulit mine, the pc wouldnt boot and i got beeps like that, found out i just didnt push the ram in all the way, Needed to be more forcefull.

boxley · 5 Jul 2006 at 19:11

It's more complicated than that:

I turn it on and it goes to boot and sits there for a while then goes: Invalid system disk insert and press any key

Then it asks if i want to boot from the xp cd in the drive, if not it will then boot normally but otherwise it will start the windows install process. Any ideas?

Corasik · 5 Jul 2006 at 19:31

Invalid system disk.. Have you used the drive before, you may need to delete any existing partitions to sucessfully boot. Boot of the XP cd, and start a setup, and delete (and then recreate) the partitions, and reinstall.

Witcher · 5 Jul 2006 at 19:43

If it is an IDE drive you could double check your jumpers are set correctly. DFI boards are seemingly a bit picky about settings and I have read a few problems coming from not designating master/slave correctly.

Is windows already installed?

I'd recommend getting the full manual for the board off the DFI site, the one in the box is a bit..lacking.

http://eu.dfi.com.tw/index_us_noflash.jsp?SITE=UK