Slight problem with bootup

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10 Dec 2005
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177
Location
England - Leicestershire
Well I've just managed to piece together my new system after a pretty hefty xmas dinner and I'm running into a couple of problems.

Everything is in place and where it should be (as far as my knowledge goes), and I've followed the quick setup guide that came with the motherboard.

Everything is getting power fine, but it doesn't boot, it just receives power, all of the fancy LEDs and fans start doing their thing and then that's it! The DFI mobo comes with diagnostic LEDs that show the status of bootup. 4 LEDs show when the system starts, 3 show when the CPU is detected, 2 show when RAM is detected, 1 shows when GFX card is detected and 0 show when the system is handed over to the operating system. I'm stuck at 4, so I assumed that there was something up with the CPU. I took it out, replaced it and it still didn't work. So, I chucked in my old AMD Athlon 64 3000+ and I got exactly the same thing.

Also, I noticed that the usage lights on my Corsair RAM sticks were yellow at standy and then a couple more of the LEDs on them came on for ~15secs after I started up the system. But, after that they went out, so I tried using 1 stick, the other stick, swapping slots and everything to no avail.

I'm really stumped guys, any advice or insight anyone can give I would be more than thankful for.

Merry xmas by the way chaps :D!

Specs are in my sig :)
 
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have you made sure that you have changed the cmos jumper so that its set to norm, most motherboards come with the cmos jumper set to clear so that the battery doesnt loose any charge, this can catch some people out,

also make sure all the power connectors on the mobo have been filled, its best to fill then to make sure the motherboard has enough power

hope this helps

Jackassuk56
 
Thanks for your help guys but it just isn't happening.

I took everything out of the case and wow, it was working! So, I went to bootup and I get a "Disk read error" during POST. I reformatted the drive 3/4 times and I was still getting the same error.

Oh, and the CMOS jumpers are not set to clear, they're set to normal operating mode so they're not the problem.

The thing is, I tried the exact same system on a Gigabyte board with an nVidia 6600GT (AGP) and it works fine :confused:. I really am stumped with this. It can't be a problem with the connection of the HDD to the mobo because it was detecting the HDD and formatting perfectly fine.

Thanks for your advice guys, if anyone else has any knowledge PLEASE let me know :)!
 
With some boards XP should setup itself to boot from the right device after install, but it is possible with some boards it fails to select the right boot device.

May not be the case here, but you never know.....
 
had a quick look at spec, is the HDD a sata II drive, if so check the jumper is set correctly for sata or sata II and that you have set the BIOS to boot from your drive with the OS disk in

you may see the drive being formatted, but if you have set the jumpers wrong on the HDD it will say read errors
 
The Seagate isn't actually in the setup because it hasn't arrived yet :P.

It's some old IDE Samsung drive. Well, when I say old it isn't that old. It's an 80GB something or other.

I also took a look in the BIOS at the boot orders and such and the correct drive was selected (seeing as I only have the one IDE drive in there :)).
 
FINALLY!!!

Thanks for all of your help guys. I don't know why it's working but I just switched it on and it's working perfectly... in fact, I'm typing this message on the PC right now :).

Merry xmas to you all (although it's a little late ;)) and have a very happy new year, buy yourselves a drink on me :).
 
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