Computer won`t boot.

[Blue Pulsar]

OMG, this sucks... ok, this story is crazy. A long time ago, when i was still a newb somewhat as far as computer specs and hardware, i asked my friend to help me order parts and build a new computer for Me, a mild gamer. I order (from newegg) a Tyan MoBo(decent but not extraordinary) a 3.0 GHz P4 cpu, a decent vid card (GeForce 5500 w/256Mb ram), 512Mb of DDR ram, and got a new tower from my other friend that runs a puter store. However when i got it all, i had many problems. First, the CPU was of the new prescott type and was not compatible with the MoBo, so i ordered a new mobo that supported the prescott CPU... but me, a *****, got one with the wrong socket type (the new mobo had a 775 socket). *sigh* So, after months of being upset, and not wanting to waste money on more parts that i couldnt return, i took all the stuff i had and went to my friend at his puter shope. I told him i wanted to use the board i got second (it was a tyan tomcat i875 or something) and we made a deal that he would take all the stuff i had and basically make me a nice new working machine, he was basicaly getting a decent mobo out of it. He ordered the new Pentium 4 CPU for the MoBo and we waited a while for it,.......
.......
.......
And when he finally got it, he put it all together just tofind out that the mobo was bad (as well as the first one i got... go figure) so he e-mailed tyan and and waited for them to send a confirmation # so he could get credited and order me a new MoBo. Well, he decided that in order to save me time, he would just get me a brand new Board and it was a bit nicer.... After playing "im not here" tag with UPS it finally showed up on friday, (like 3 days ago). Ok, get this. He got it all together (though i didnt have my harddrive with me) it ran through bios ok and was good to go... except one thing... he had nabbed my heatsink to put in a puter that he was selling real fast... i had to wait all weekend to get it. So i got it monday and took it home and put my harddrive in it along with my DVDrom.

And now we come to the technical problem....
I put a formatted hard drive in it with no OS and attempted to install windows via a disk in the... you guessed it, CDdrive. But, problems arose when it didnt seem to be able to read the disk. So i took another hard drive that had a bootleg copy of windows xp (expired) and installed that just to see if it would go to windows.... it didnt. I can access BIOS and CMOS but i cant get anything to boot. Ive checked all the cables through out the machine countless times.

At one point i even made my friend (no the puter shop one) take the Drive out of his puter to see if he would boot it... no luck.

After a while of switching dard drives and cd roms back and forth i got it to come up with a message of "No operating system found" on both hard drives. but it still wouldnt boot from the cdrom, (yes i did change the boot settings and checked and rechecked them) and then after just turning it off and on in desperation i finally came up with this message...

We apologize for the inconvenience, but windows did not start successfully. A recent hardware or software change might have cauysed this.

If your comnputer stopped responding.... (blah blah blah)

it then gives me a choice to go to windows in one of the following ways.

Safe Mode
Safe Mode with Networking
Safe Mode with Command Prompt
Start Windows Normally


i attempted to choose the latter and the puter froze... i restarted and repeated.... and that is as much as i can get out of the puter. And since i couldnt even get my friends hard drived to work with my puter, im guessing the drives and the Mobo are having comunication problems.

Well, incase ur wondering here are my specs

Pentium 4 3.2GHz CPU (775 chipset)
Tyan Tomcat 17230A S5160 Motherboard
2 gigs of DDR2 ram
Maxtor 120gig Hard drive
im not sure of the vid card but its decent, but i will be switching to dual SLI cards eventually.

so i ended up with decent machine... well, specs-wise, i plan on taking it back to the shop tomorrow, but any input would be nice and i will keep you all posted onthis ongoing saga of...


THE MAN THAT CANT OWN A WORKING COMPUTER!!!

 

[Rik]

A new mobo will need a new install of windows. Make sure all the jumper settings on all your ata devices (cd rom and hard drive) are correct. It being a new mobo, setting all the jumper settings on cdrom and hard drive to cable select will be the easiest way to do it.

 

[Tedster]

ensure your copy of windows is legit. Techspot members cannot help those with illegal copies nor do we condone piracy.

 

[Blue Pulsar]

A new mobo will need a new install of windows. Make sure all the jumper settings on all your ata devices (cd rom and hard drive) are correct. It being a new mobo, setting all the jumper settings on cdrom and hard drive to cable select will be the easiest way to do it.

Right thats the thing, i couldnt get it to boot to any drives... so i COULDNT install windows. And i did change the jumper settings on the drives : )

But the good news is that when i took it back to the shop my friend messed with it a bit and was able to get it to boot to the Disk drive but still had trouble going much further. After all this it was a simple and funny problem... when he installed the heat sink, he had been in such a hurry to get it together that he forgot to take of the small film of plasic that covers the heat grease. The CPU was instantly over heating and not wanting to do any functions beyond BIOS and CMOS. So, problems solved, i am now using my system for non other than the most important thing in the world.... GAMES. but i have discovered another less anoyying problem, but still rather important. I have no sound. I realized that my brand new mobo has no onboard sound card (its a server board... lol) and when i got a cheap Audigy Blaster sound card, it doesnt work. And yes... i know this is the first thing everyone says when something doesnt work "you need to install the drivers" which i did. and still nothing.... *shr***** ill figure that out sooner or later, i just need to get back to City of Villains. MMOs for the win!!