If this isn't fixed I may have to find a husband

[AshJustAsh]

CPU: P4 2.4 Ghz
MoBo: Pt880 MSI
Ram: 4 gig of ram
GPU: ATI Radeon 9700
HD: Seagate Barracuda 7200.9 500gig Sata
PSU: Enermax ATX 12V 350W

The below is what has been going on today, repeatedly. This computer is a Frankenstein build, most of the parts I've found or have been given(Yes, it's an old pc with an absurd amount of ram, but this is for my aged grandmother whom I'm trying to update from her P2 system so she'll shut up about me finding a husband and making babies). I put it together yesterday, today was the boot up day, so I put in the windows xp disk:

“Windows XP Home Edition Setup does not find Hardrive”

No problem. I went through, double, triple, and quadrouple checked that the HD was fully connected, even switched out both sata and power cables just to be sure.

“Windows XP Home Edition Setup does not find Hardrive”

Crap, okay, Bios. So I take out the WinXp disk, get a a “Core Cell” start up screen. “Huh? wtf”, I miss the little notice of what buttons to push to get to setup and then get this.

“VIA Rhine II Fast Ethernet Adapter v2.19
Client mac addr: 00 0c 76 98 75 46 Guid: 0's

PXE-E51 No DHCP or Proxydhcp were recieved”

What? Ethernet adapter? Why is it trying to boot off the ethernet adapter? Restart, hit “shift-tab” for set up;

“Via Tech. VT8237 SATA RAID BIOS Ver 2.41

Notice: The number of disks is not adequate to create a RAID!!!

Serial_Ch0 Master No Drive
Serial_Ch1 Master No Drive”

WHAT?! Unable to access or interact into bios screen except to escape. Ok, this is where my head first meets the desk, and I restart. Hit tab as suggested for “window”, whatever that is.

“Ethernet Adapter V.2.19
PXE
Boot: Network first, local second”

What? *facedesk* Grah!! I play around with these qualities. Restart. Mess around some more. Restart.

Rinse and repeat for the past 3 hours. Operator failure leads to RAGE quit

Operator randomly pushed buttons, then rages and removes the battery, and then reinserts.

Now, I'm at the normal boot up screen as if none of the above as been driving me batty, and this is what it's telling me.

“Del: Setup F11: Bootmenu F12: Network boot F10: Flash Recovery

Cmo/CPNV Checksum Bad

Press F1 to run SETUP
Press F2 to load default values and continue”

This is where I throttle the computer because I haven't touched the Bios, cause I can't even Get to the buggers!


Ok, now Through out today the normal boot screen has at random come up and gives me the false hope I can get into the bios and at the least change it from trying to boot off of the Ethernet adapter. Fail, I almost immediately go back into the Rinse and Repeat cycle outlined above.

This is where someone suggest that where I got the mobo from, it was bad from there. Well, actually, I got the Mobo from a clanmate who had just the day prior to mailing it to me was using it before he went all i7. It worked fine.

I have through out the day, on false hope there might just be a a simple hardware conflict, removed or disconnected everything in differant combination's. Nope, fail again.

I'll be the first one to admit that this sort of stuff I'm a Grade-A noob with. I've built computers before, but I've never had this problem(And honestly, a trained monkey can put a computer together, so my ability to do so doesn't really mean crap). Probably due to just pure blind luck, my builds almost always are go from start, minus RAM not set just right, or a bad cable. So, I really have no idea what to do from here. I can't flash the bios from floppy...So...yeah. Cue damsel in distress wailing.

[AshJustAsh]

CPU: P4 2.4 Ghz
MoBo: Pt880 MSI
Ram: 4 gig of ram
GPU: ATI Radeon 9700
HD: Seagate Barracuda 7200.9 500gig Sata
PSU: Enermax ATX 12V 350W

Okay, update, I managed to get into "AMIBIOS New Setup Utility". Don't ask me how; Ask the cat, "Squeekers get off the Keyboard!"

Anyways, Bios is reading my CDrom as the HD? Cue the damsel distress wailing once more, cause from this point on I think blind luck with bow to ignorance with a really shiney big paperweight as the end result.

My AIM is listed on here, so if any of you are around and willing to help the "silly girl" out, I would appreciate it.

[Alexjfinch]

Right so the mainboard worked a few days ago - now it doesn't with all the new goodies you bunged on to it.

You've clearly done a bit of trial and error by removing difference bits of hardware to see if you can get it going - finally we are in the bios and its reading everything backwards.

Have you cleared the CMOS by jumper yet?

[AshJustAsh]

Er....No, I haven't. How would I do that?

[Alexjfinch]

Board look like this? -

http://www.tbreak.com/reviews/fullimage.php?image=5475

[AshJustAsh]

I actually found the manual for this MoBo on the web, and I have cleared the CMOS by jumper. Now it says CMOS setting are wrong.

It's still reading the CDrom as the HD, so I exited out of the Bios setup and now I have a new screen.

"Select First Boot Device
Floppy: 1.44 MB 31/2
CD/DVD-0: JLMS XJ-HD166s
BBS-0 (Network): Intell UNDI, PXE-2.0

-------------

[up/dn] Select [Return] Boot [Esc] Cancel] "

[Alexjfinch]

HD is IDE or SATA?

Tested on another machine?

[AshJustAsh]

SATA, and yes it was tested and working another machine.

[Alexjfinch]

Right selecting a first boot device won't make a difference - thats just what the bios trys to boot from first.

You tried an "out of case" power up?

[AshJustAsh]

No, I haven't, but that is what I'm going to do now.

I just put in another HD from my own PC, and while it recognized it, it wouldn't boot from it. *facedesk*

Update:
I decided to give the bios one more shot, disabling all other boot options, with the other hardrive, a 20 gig IDE from my first build long long long ago, and it booted up just fine. "Hello Windows"

However, this 20 gig is very....finnicky, and I keep it around just for this. It's good enough to get a computer to boot, but beyond that...It's just a paperweight.

So, I've heard of "out of case" builds, but I've never done one. Mostly cause I scared crapless that I'll fry something. Best advice to do it safely to try to get the 500 gig recognized?

[Alexjfinch]

Right we are technically routing the fault to the mainboard itself.

Sounds like a controller chip.

Try an out of case build and see what happens.

[AshJustAsh]

Got some advice on an out of case build from another site and the results are? The same.

So, at this point I'm convinced this is just a big ole fubar with the seagate hdd. If i can get it to at least boot up and to the welcome screen with the IDE hd, there's no reason, that I can see after the out of case build, why the seagate shouldn't boot up.

I'll be taking it back to my place tonight to check it on my comp just to verify that it is in working order, again.

Thanks so much for your help, Alex. You've saved me from an annerism.

[Alexjfinch]

There is something else to this.

Let me think.


EDIT: Change SATA cable? power and data?

[AshJustAsh]

I've tried three different SATA data cables on the seagate. One of them was from the person who sent me the harddrive, but I replaced it one my own that I knew worked. The odds of all three being dead isn't very good.

Now, the power cable, that could be it. The enermax isn't equiped for SATA, I have an adapter that I used on a previous build about a year ago. And since the power supply on my comp did have a sata connector, I didn't test the adapter. When I get home, test it on my comp with the adapter, and then with out, we'll know if it that is problem.

[Alexjfinch]

well thats a quick test - power it on, and find out if the drive spins.

[AshJustAsh]

Ok, I'm home, and the HDD spins up, but it wont register on my machine either (I'm a bit anal retentive about testing hardware to rule out all possibilities). So, I contacted the friend who sent me the hard drive about this, "Oh! Yeah, that does that all the time. Just reformat it and it'll work again."

So, do I install the hd and then have to randomly reformat it when it decides to crap and loose all the data? I think not, I'll be getting a new hard drive. I don't have the time to come go over there and back it up every day all because it's a finicky bugger.

Thanks again for all your help. Of course, it would have saved us both time and energy if he had just told me from the beginning it was a twitchy hdd.

[trulad]

Maybe this "friend" gave you a faulty hard drive on purpose because he has eyes for you. Wedding bells will be ringing !! The title of your post "if this isn't fixed I may have to find a husband" brings me to say this.
trulad

[Alexjfinch]

Originally Posted by AshJustAsh Ok, I'm home, and the HDD spins up, but it wont register on my machine either (I'm a bit anal retentive about testing hardware to rule out all possibilities). So, I contacted the friend who sent me the hard drive about this, "Oh! Yeah, that does that all the time. Just reformat it and it'll work again." So, do I install the hd and then have to randomly reformat it when it decides to crap and loose all the data? I think not, I'll be getting a new hard drive. I don't have the time to come go over there and back it up every day all because it's a finicky bugger. Thanks again for all your help. Of course, it would have saved us both time and energy if he had just told me from the beginning it was a twitchy hdd.

Have you tried your own drive in the other machine just to be sure the computer POSTs? that why you can rule out the mainboard as being at fault.

Trulad - that wasn't very constructive.

[AshJustAsh]

Originally Posted by trulad Maybe this "friend" gave you a faulty hard drive on purpose because he has eyes for you. Wedding bells will be ringing !! The title of your post "if this isn't fixed I may have to find a husband" brings me to say this. trulad

Since my friend prefers his partners to be of the male persuasion...I highly doubt his actions were leading up to a marriage proposal.

Originally Posted by Alexjfinch Have you tried your own drive in the other machine just to be sure the computer POSTs? that why you can rule out the mainboard as being at fault. Trulad - that wasn't very constructive.

I was doing some research about the MSI PT880 last night, and discovered that it only supports SATA I. This wasn't what my friend had lead me to believe; the seagate is SATA II, and all of my drives minus the IDE is SATA II. But, then again, I didn't really ask about what the PT 880 supported in regards to SATA.

Either way, my HDD's aren't gonna post, even if the seagate worked it wouldn't have posted, and I'm going to have to find a SATA I from somewhere.

[Alexjfinch]

Originally Posted by AshJustAsh Since my friend prefers his partners to be of the male persuasion...I highly doubt his actions were leading up to a marriage proposal. I was doing some research about the MSI PT880 last night, and discovered that it only supports SATA I. This wasn't what my friend had lead me to believe; the seagate is SATA II, and all of my drives minus the IDE is SATA II. But, then again, I didn't really ask about what the PT 880 supported in regards to SATA. Either way, my HDD's aren't gonna post, even if the seagate worked it wouldn't have posted, and I'm going to have to find a SATA I from somewhere.

I was under the impression SATAII drives were backwards compatable to SATAI - they would just transfer data at the SATAI speed as thats what the board supports

[AshJustAsh]

In a couple of different places I found user complaints about both the PT880 and the Seagate 500gb 7200.9 being twitchy when it comes to SATA. There a few instances of the Seagate not being backwards compatible; I think I found this info from some user reviews on Newegg about the 7200.9, but I'm not 100 percent positive about Newegg being the source.

Then on another site I lurk on I found an old post about a few users of the PT880 and their SATAII not seeing each other, purchasing a SATA I fixed the problem.

I'm being a slacker at work right now, but when I get home to tonight I'll link the sources of the information for you.

I do still think there is an issue with the mobo, somewhere, but I will have to purchase a new hdd because of the seagates twitchiness. I'm going along the lines of bypassing a known glitch with the PT880 by finding an old SATA I (There's a pretty cheap 400gb one on newegg; Seagate 400gb 7200.8 I think it was). The mobo was working fine when it was sent to me and I'm hoping that by eliminating known hardware conflicts I can get that mobo issue.

Additional Question:

Ok, it just occured to me, the mobo and cpu came together with the ATI 9700. The previous owner had everything overclocked at that time. I asked him to reset everything back to it's default operating speeds; since I don't do overclocking and I'm completely ignorant on how to deal with overclocked machines...Would this reset perhaps have caused something to go wonky? I don't beleive he tested the hardware after resetting the default operating speed.

[Alexjfinch]

Try a IDE hard drive just to eliminate all SATA related issues

[AshJustAsh]

lol That was my intention, however this mobo has more issues with IDE hard drives than it does with SATA. I'm going to take a stand and say I don't like MSI. This is my first time ever dealing with their product and I am not impressed at all. I'm an Asus fan girl.

With MSI I feel like I'm dating the crazed down-town street walker; if I don't do everything just right and offer the right amount of money: she's gonna freak out and try to slit my throat. With Asus; it's the girl next door, pet her right and she purrs like a dream. Guh, MSI is nothing but a fail for mobo's; I'm just going to get a friggin SATAI hdd from newegg and try not to nuke the whole thing if it doesn't work.

[Masaki 7-11]

Originally Posted by AshJustAsh lol That was my intention, however this mobo has more issues with IDE hard drives than it does with SATA. I'm going to take a stand and say I don't like MSI. This is my first time ever dealing with their product and I am not impressed at all. I'm an Asus fan girl. With MSI I feel like I'm dating the crazed down-town street walker; if I don't do everything just right and offer the right amount of money: she's gonna freak out and try to slit my throat. With Asus; it's the girl next door, pet her right and she purrs like a dream. Guh, MSI is nothing but a fail for mobo's; I'm just going to get a friggin SATAI hdd from newegg and try not to nuke the whole thing if it doesn't work.

VIA chipsets (like the one in the MSI motherboard) have a pretty bad reputation on the intel platform, I've used a few VIA-based intel motherboards of various brands and have had a pretty bad experience with all of them.

If you can afford it, I think you may be better off getting a new motherboard/cpu/memory combo. For $150 you can get a pretty good motherboard with integrated graphics (perhaps Asus), a dual core processor and 2GB of DDR2 ram. You can probably recover most of the money you spent by selling the old 4GB DDR1 ram since it's quite rare and sells for usually double what DDR2 ram costs.

[Force Flow]

Originally Posted by Alexjfinch I was under the impression SATAII drives were backwards compatable to SATAI - they would just transfer data at the SATAI speed as thats what the board supports

Correct, however with some motherboards, you need to set the jumper on the drive for SATA I or you'll have problems.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16813130476

Yes, your motherboard only supports SATA I (aka SATA 1.5; 1.5Gb/s is the transfer speed)


Maybe that is the source of your troubles, AshJustAsh

On the bottom of page 2 is a diagram of where the jumper needs to go to force SATA 1.5 mode: http://www.seagate.com/support/disc/...100390002b.pdf

[Alexjfinch]

Learn something new every day.

Hopefully this issue can be solved now!

[AshJustAsh]

Originally Posted by Masaki 7-11 VIA chipsets (like the one in the MSI motherboard) have a pretty bad reputation on the intel platform, I've used a few VIA-based intel motherboards of various brands and have had a pretty bad experience with all of them. If you can afford it, I think you may be better off getting a new motherboard/cpu/memory combo. For $150 you can get a pretty good motherboard with integrated graphics (perhaps Asus), a dual core processor and 2GB of DDR2 ram. You can probably recover most of the money you spent by selling the old 4GB DDR1 ram since it's quite rare and sells for usually double what DDR2 ram costs.

Well, this is just a Frankenstein build, pieces and parts from a bunch of different people and computers. I would much rather just make use of these parts for this computer, since the most strenuous thing it'll have to do is access the internet and play solitaire. My grandmother, whom this is for, doesn't do anything to warrant upgrading her machine that much; compared to her P2 this system will be more than enough for her.

However, I didn't know that about the DDR1. I've had 7 gigs of stick laying around here since I upgraded to ddr2 on all my machines last year. I only put the 4gb in this machine because it could take 4 and I figured they worthless now with the ddr3 flying around. I'll probably end up selling all but one stick if what you say is true.

Originally Posted by Force Flow Correct, however with some motherboards, you need to set the jumper on the drive for SATA I or you'll have problems. http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16813130476 Yes, your motherboard only supports SATA I (aka SATA 1.5; 1.5Gb/s is the transfer speed) Maybe that is the source of your troubles, AshJustAsh On the bottom of page 2 is a diagram of where the jumper needs to go to force SATA 1.5 mode: http://www.seagate.com/support/disc/...100390002b.pdf

Dang jumpers, . It was not set to force SATA 1.5, I put a jumper on it, but it was still a no go. This HDD is just wonky and I'm not sure what to do with it since it basically seems like just shiny paperweight, at least for a person with my level tech know-how. I guess I'll just experiment with it on my machines and see if I can get working on a reliable basis.

Thanks again for all your guys help and info, it's is much appreciated.

[Force Flow]

You'll also need to load the SATA drivers onto a floppy and press F6 during setup when prompted in order to load them. Otherwise, the drive won't be recognized.

If you can change the setting in the BIOS for ACHI mode to IDE mode, you might be able to get around that requirement.

[glc]

That board won't have AHCI mode - just native SATA (might be called IDE) and RAID. With only one drive, it should NOT be in RAID mode, and you may STILL need a driver on floppy to see the drive.

However, in my opinion, that board has 2 strikes against it - it's a VIA chipset and it's a MSI. Is it socket 478 or 775? I wouldn't give your grandmother a system with such an unstable, unreliable motherboard unless you like spending a lot of time at her house.

[AshJustAsh]

This is just to inform ya'll what the outcome was. The new hdd went in like a charm and has been running stable all week on a modified OS. I had to use a modified one because for whatever reason a full windows OS made it very unstable; stuttering, lock ups, blue screens.

Originally Posted by glc That board won't have AHCI mode - just native SATA (might be called IDE) and RAID. With only one drive, it should NOT be in RAID mode, and you may STILL need a driver on floppy to see the drive. However, in my opinion, that board has 2 strikes against it - it's a VIA chipset and it's a MSI. Is it socket 478 or 775? I wouldn't give your grandmother a system with such an unstable, unreliable motherboard unless you like spending a lot of time at her house.

It is reading the new HDD as a RAID and has since I first connected it. I, however, have no idea how to correct this or have any idea as too why it's reading as such.

It is a 478 socket and I will agree that it is a highly unstable motherboard, any time I've touched the bios she has a frigging conniption and starts acting like Cybil Shepard.

She also runs a bit on the warm side. I've checked the basics; fans, seating, thermal goo. But the first day I actually had her "official" running she was rocking a 75C on the cpu after 10 minutes of idle. I've managed to get it down to 40C with the fans on high, and she hit's 70C after an hour of running a game on idle. guh. I'm not sure if it's just the P4 Northwood (Which I've read in a few places runs warm anyways?) or a combination of factors.

Either way, this "Bad JuJu" pc is going to be a pet project of mine and I'm just going to give grandma my old Athlon 64 which is solid as a rock for what she needs. See if maybe if can tweak this P4 system to take the Athlon's place as the LAN server.

So! Thank you guys for all your advice on this build, I learned a lot from all your help.