Motherboard Problem Solving

[Vasbinder]

Hiya, guys! This is gonna' be my first post and after reading several others, I've come to realize you guys are very knowledgable and much faster to respond than some second rate support team that these manufacturers have nowadays. Still waiting on a reply e-mail from yesterday from them. >.<

Anywho, here is my dilema. I just recently ordered and recieved a new PC Chips 861G motherboard with AGP x8, and attached to that I got an Athlon 64 3400+ processor, already pieced together and tested by SMK Superstore, supposedly one of the leading dealers in computer parts on both Newegg.com and Pricewatch.com. After much toil and torment, I managed to get the motherboard installed into my tower and thus opening Pandora's Box upon my very unknowledgable self.

The first of my problems came with the video display. For some reason both my GeForce 6800 and my integrated video that came with the motherboard were not working. I also could not hear any of the beep error codes from my motherboard because of something faulty. So I decided to try a CMOS jumper reset. I left it unplugged and reset for about five minutes, which I doubt really matters, and I came back and I could finally hear the beeps. However, the image was still not being displayed on my moniter.

I cruised around these forums and found out many people had some similar problems and then I read the sticky. I pulled out my motherboard and did a test outside of my tower, very barebones. It worked! Got a display on my moniter that it could not find a boot drive. Hooray! So I plugged everything back in, very carefully and very slowly. I got it back up and running inside the tower up the point of the test outside. I plugged in my keyboard and mouse and then I turned on my hard drive, which has been used for about a year before my previous motherboard fried. It has an original copy of Windows XP Professional on it, so its all legit.

Anywho, after plugging in my hard drive, it asked me if I wanted to start up windows normally or from the previous settings. However, my keyboard, still using a PS2 port, was not useable, and the light on the base of my optical mouse was also not lit up. I think the light in the mouse though only comes from within Windows and not outside of it. That's beside the point. Anyway, I just let it automatically start Windows after 30 seconds. It started to load up the operating system and after the loading screen, it automatically restarted my computer! I have no idea why, but it did, and it did it several times in a row.

I've tried a different keyboard, changed my hard drives jumper settings around a bit, tried automatically booting from the CD drive from the CD that came with my motherboard, all sorts of stuff! Not sure how to install drivers and whatnot if I can't even get into my operating system. That and I have no hard boot floppy.

So please assist me, wise members of PC Mechanic Forums, so that I may be on my marry way and back working on my computer animation stuff, where I belong!

P.S. Sorry about the long post! I type fast, this is short for me. >.<

[ktkendall]

The reason it isn't working is because your trying to boot from an already loaded windows installation that is all set up for a different system. You have 2 choices, both willstart with booting from the XP cdrom, then let the widows setup program start and either do a total reformat an install windows fresh, or it will ask you if you want to repair the existing windows installation, which you can also do. The repair installation will preserve your previous programs and files, but the full format and reinstall is a better way to go if you can.

[Vasbinder]

Alright, I will reformat once I get home from work in a few hours! Thank you very much for your quick response. I was figuring it was something along the lines of a fresh install of Windows, but now I have the feedback I needed. I will post back if I have any other problems, or if its fixed!

[blue60007]

Make sure to back up any important files before re-formatting. Formatting wipes everything, whereas a repair will keep files intact (never a bad idea to do a back-up anyway though).

[Vasbinder]

Originally Posted by ktkendall The reason it isn't working is because your trying to boot from an already loaded windows installation that is all set up for a different system. You have 2 choices, both willstart with booting from the XP cdrom, then let the widows setup program start and either do a total reformat an install windows fresh, or it will ask you if you want to repair the existing windows installation, which you can also do. The repair installation will preserve your previous programs and files, but the full format and reinstall is a better way to go if you can.

I was thinking about this statement on the way to work and even more when I got back. My hard drive worked fine on a friend's computer when we were doing our testing to see what was wrong with my computer before. I mean, he has all different settings, right?

Anywho, besides the point, the REAL problem was when I came home. I went to my reformat my hard drive by connecting the Primary IDE to my hard drive and the Secondary to my CD ROM drive. First, the computer locked up when I had both connected at the same time. Wierd, huh? Anyway, I decided to just connect my Primary IDE to the CD ROM drive and run my Windows XP Pro installation CD. It went through the whole process of loading everything it needed and doing a scan of my system hardware, however, when it got to the point of choosing whether I wanted to format or petition it, I realized an obvious truth:

My keyboard and mouse still weren't working!

Luckily, I have several keyboards lying around, but none of them would work! Its as if its not reading my USB or PS2 ports on my motherboard at all! However, the integrated VGA seems to be working fine. Hmmm... any thoughts on what I could do next? How do I install drivers or reformat when none of my inputs work?

[glc]

On the IDE issue, check your cabling and jumpering. Example - Western Digital hard drives will not work jumpered to Master if there's no slave on the same cable. Today's 80 wire cables are designed for Cable Select jumpering and must have the correct end on the motherboard.

Make sure you don't have the keyboard plugged into the mouse port - or the mouse plugged into the keyboard port. They are both PS/2 so this is an easy mistake to make.

You may want to clear the CMOS to set the bios back to defaults.

The board may be tested, but PC Chips is the bottom of the barrel - very low quality boards.

[Vasbinder]

Originally Posted by glc On the IDE issue, check your cabling and jumpering. Example - Western Digital hard drives will not work jumpered to Master if there's no slave on the same cable. Today's 80 wire cables are designed for Cable Select jumpering and must have the correct end on the motherboard. Make sure you don't have the keyboard plugged into the mouse port - or the mouse plugged into the keyboard port. They are both PS/2 so this is an easy mistake to make. You may want to clear the CMOS to set the bios back to defaults. The board may be tested, but PC Chips is the bottom of the barrel - very low quality boards.

I assumed, for the price, that PC Chips was a low-quality brand name. Unfortunately, I just want to make sure that it is defective before making any returns, so I'm simply just running through tests at the moment.

My hard drive jumped has never changed from Cable Select since the day that I got it. It worked great before my previous motherboard fried, not sure what happened with it now. Hmmm... anywho, also, I made sure my keyboards were all plugged into the PS/2 ports, so that's all good. I've also reset the CMOS a couple of times before I even got as far as testing.

I also went out and purchased a PS/2 to USB conversion cable just to check to see if my USB was delivering power into my keyboard, but that was also not powering as well. Not sure if that can be powered before Windows though on a new motherboard. Its just wierd that its not working though, very wierd.

So, hmmm, maybe I can run through some important tests you guys would like to give me before putting the board on the chop block. I'm not sure on what other tests I can do, to be honest with you, I'm not very good when it comes to hardware. >.< I've done the out-of-case tests and whatnot so, ummm, yah, thanks for your quick responses! Its very much appreciated!