New build

[osequi]

This weekend I got a wild hair and decided to build my second pc. Here are the specs:
ASUS A7V8X MB w/audio and lan
Amd 1.8
512 MB of ram PC 2700 DDR
60 gig HD Maxtor
Plextor CD-RW
DVD player
ATI Radeon 9000.

Here's my dilema. When I start my pc and go to bios I see my floppy, my dvd and the cdrom all of which appear to be functioning. When I set the boot sequence, the only only that it searches is the hd eventhough the bios shows the a: as the bootable drive. If I put the start up disk in the a: I get a disk error. Now the light is on but on one is home. I can't even get the cd or dvd player to read as they don't appear to be there. I've checked the wires and jumpers and they all seem to be in the right place. Any suggestions.

osequi

[HAL9000]

Is your floppy light on all the time.... if so, you don't have the ribbon cable connected properly. The end with the twist goes to the floppy drive itself. Pin 1 on the motherboard will be either marked on the board, or in the manual. Pin 1 on the floppy drive is normally closest to the power connector, but there are exceptions where it is reversed.

[osequi]

Hal, thanks the cable was backward. Now I can get to drive a: but it still won't read it. I can hear the floppy spin the light comes on when you go to it, then I get the disk failure (this is using win 98 startup disk) when I change disks and use the hd utility disk the error message I get is can't find dos.

I've changed the boot order to load from cd-rom, when I turn the computer on the disk is active it appears to read the cd but proceeds as if it was empty.

During the boot up phase I get no error messages so I am a bit confused.

why was this thread moved any ideas?

Thanks,
Paul

[Cricket]

Hi osequi,

You thread was probably moved because it has to do with a new build/assembly.

Check your IDE cable to be sure they're installed correctly (red stripe to pin 1 on the motherboard and drive). Also, connect only 1 optical drive as master on the secondary IDE channel for now...you can connect the other drive later.

Boot up your computer and go into BIOS and set all your IDE channels to AUTO and make sure the CD-ROM is selected as the first boot device. Save and Exit.

Try again.

Cricket

[osequi]

thanks cricket will try that. What about the floppy any clues why it's behaving this way?

osequi

[Alienware_Dude]

Defective/dirty drive?

[osequi]

Cricket I tried your suggestion. The bios now lists the cd-rom but when I boot up it will look at the rom drive spin but no boot. I'm stomped because it's doing this with all my drives.

osequi

[Cricket]

Hi osequi,

Which OS are you trying to install?

Cricket

[osequi]

Cricket, thanks for the reply. I was installing win 2000. For whatever reason I couldn't get the drive to work. Somehow, I managed to get boot from the cd rom by continually rebooting. Once the software was installed I was able to reformat the diskettes and make a boot copy of 2000. I really don't know why both drives were acting the way they were. Now I need to go back repartition the hd, since my old system only recognized 32gig of the 60gig and then install all the drivers for the mb video card extra. Any suggestions for a quick and easy solution accepted.

Again thanks,

osqui

[osequi]

Cricket, thanks for the reply. I was installing win 2000. For whatever reason I couldn't get the drive to work. Somehow, I managed to get boot from the cd rom by continually rebooting. Once the software was installed I was able to reformat the diskettes and make a boot copy of 2000. I really don't know why both drives were acting the way they were. Now I need to go back repartition the hd, since my old system only recognized 32gig of the 60gig and then install all the drivers for the mb video card extra. Any suggestions for a quick and easy solution accepted.

Again thanks,

osqui

[osequi]

Sorry for the double post!

osequi

[osequi]

O.K. the computer works great...
...as long as either the dvd player or the cdrw is unplugged. Individually the bios will recognize either of them. Plug one as the master and the other as the slave using cable select and neither of them show up. I replaced the ide cable in case the other one was bad. I've also flip flopped the drives to see if that makes a difference but no luck. I checked the connection and everything is in place. I don't know what else to check. As I said individually the system will recognize either of them.
Any ideas?

osequi

[Cricket]

Originally posted by osequi O.K. the computer works great... ...as long as either the dvd player or the cdrw is unplugged. Individually the bios will recognize either of them. Plug one as the master and the other as the slave using cable select and neither of them show up. I replaced the ide cable in case the other one was bad. I've also flip flopped the drives to see if that makes a difference but no luck. I checked the connection and everything is in place. I don't know what else to check. As I said individually the system will recognize either of them. Any ideas?

Are you using a 40 wire ATA33 IDE cable or the newer 80 wire ATA66/100/133 IDE cable? The Cable Select jumper setting is used only with the 80 wire IDE cables...if you're using the older 40 wire IDE cable, use the master/slave jumper settings.

Cricket

[osequi]

Cricket, once again thank you. I was using the one that came with the drive, which is a 40 wire. I changed it to the one supplied by the mb (which I should have used in the first place) and both drives are in place. Again thanks very much!!

Paul