So today, I built my first computer with the help of friends. We had a few power issues at first but we discovered I just needed to hold down the power button for a second or two. If it helps, I have an Antec 900 case.
However, sometimes if I just turn it off and turn it on right after by holding down the power button, the monitor doesn't show anything at all even though the hardware all works. I have to wait a few minutes with the computer off, but when I press the power button, the computer instantly leaps to life, instead of my having to hold the power button for a few seconds.
The furthest we've gotten is to a blankish Vista screen immediately after the Vista loading screen. The cursor appeared and I moved the mouse around, only to have it freeze on me after a second. We kept retrying, and it started freezing upon the BIOS looking screen saying "Loading Vista files" or something similar. My friend was guessing it wasn't detecting the hard drive. We went into the BIOS and it detected only the DVD drive that was connected, in the SATA slot number one. We noticed though on the same page it said HDD autodetect was disabled, which was weird because the screen after the startup menu where you can choose to enter setup had the hard drive shown in light blue, saying 250 GB available and the hard drive name. It was not there, however, instead showing No HDD detected, before we unplugged it from the SATA slot number one from the mobo and replugged it into a SATA RAID slot. There were six "normal" SATA slots on my mobo, all red and clustered around each other on the bottom right (with the I/O ports to the top left), and the SATA RAID slot we plugged it into was black and directly above the slot we had plugged the graphics card into.
If it helps, this is the mobo I got: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813131013
My friend asked when I started the computer for the first time if it asked me to do any formatting or configuration with the hard drive, which it did. But somehow or another, I sort of skipped it and it went to the screen which said ERROR BOOTING OS, INSERT OS DISC AND PRESS START or something. Every time I restarted, it would skip the formatting part and try to load the OS disc, freezing upon loading the files. So he said maybe I had to partition the hard drive, and went to the BIOS setup page, whereupon it froze again. We could mess around inside it for a few minutes, but would always freeze up. He did say, though, that installing an OS took a while, maybe around 15 or 20 minutes, but should it have frozen?
To recap, what it does now when I insert my Vista Home Premium 64-bit CD and start it up is it goes to the ASUS logo screen where I can go to the BIOS setup, then goes to the screen where it detects my hard drive. After that, it goes to a screen with text on the bottom saying Loading Vista files... with a gray bar across the bottom being filled white from the left as it loads, then once it becomes fully white, it goes to a Vista loading screen, with a rounder, smaller bar and a color background. Then it goes to a Vistaesque looking background with only a single cursor that can be moved for half a second before freezing.
Is this normal for installing a new OS on a clean hard drive? If so, sorry for just wasting your time. >_>
But if there is a problem, kindly let me know what I can do to solve it. Thanks in advance.
However, sometimes if I just turn it off and turn it on right after by holding down the power button, the monitor doesn't show anything at all even though the hardware all works. I have to wait a few minutes with the computer off, but when I press the power button, the computer instantly leaps to life, instead of my having to hold the power button for a few seconds.
The furthest we've gotten is to a blankish Vista screen immediately after the Vista loading screen. The cursor appeared and I moved the mouse around, only to have it freeze on me after a second. We kept retrying, and it started freezing upon the BIOS looking screen saying "Loading Vista files" or something similar. My friend was guessing it wasn't detecting the hard drive. We went into the BIOS and it detected only the DVD drive that was connected, in the SATA slot number one. We noticed though on the same page it said HDD autodetect was disabled, which was weird because the screen after the startup menu where you can choose to enter setup had the hard drive shown in light blue, saying 250 GB available and the hard drive name. It was not there, however, instead showing No HDD detected, before we unplugged it from the SATA slot number one from the mobo and replugged it into a SATA RAID slot. There were six "normal" SATA slots on my mobo, all red and clustered around each other on the bottom right (with the I/O ports to the top left), and the SATA RAID slot we plugged it into was black and directly above the slot we had plugged the graphics card into.
If it helps, this is the mobo I got: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813131013
My friend asked when I started the computer for the first time if it asked me to do any formatting or configuration with the hard drive, which it did. But somehow or another, I sort of skipped it and it went to the screen which said ERROR BOOTING OS, INSERT OS DISC AND PRESS START or something. Every time I restarted, it would skip the formatting part and try to load the OS disc, freezing upon loading the files. So he said maybe I had to partition the hard drive, and went to the BIOS setup page, whereupon it froze again. We could mess around inside it for a few minutes, but would always freeze up. He did say, though, that installing an OS took a while, maybe around 15 or 20 minutes, but should it have frozen?
To recap, what it does now when I insert my Vista Home Premium 64-bit CD and start it up is it goes to the ASUS logo screen where I can go to the BIOS setup, then goes to the screen where it detects my hard drive. After that, it goes to a screen with text on the bottom saying Loading Vista files... with a gray bar across the bottom being filled white from the left as it loads, then once it becomes fully white, it goes to a Vista loading screen, with a rounder, smaller bar and a color background. Then it goes to a Vistaesque looking background with only a single cursor that can be moved for half a second before freezing.
Is this normal for installing a new OS on a clean hard drive? If so, sorry for just wasting your time. >_>
But if there is a problem, kindly let me know what I can do to solve it. Thanks in advance.
