Newbie stupidity...

[Banetahtoh]

Ah, ok, some of you may have heard some of my story before.

First of all, I have two computer, the ones in my signature. Both have 2200XPs. Neither worked for a while. I don't know why the Soltek wouldn't run with the 2200xp but I have an upgrade for it, it just won't boot. The Biostar BIOS needed to be upgraded, and I did so. I bought a Duron 1.1ghz to use to boot and upgrade. I reset the frequency to 133mhz for the cpu, and put a 2200XP in, and It booted the first time. Now it won't boot. I don't know why. It did this sometimes with the Duron too. Booted sometime, sometimes the fans just spinned.

Please help!

Thank you in advance. All of the parts in my sig are availiable, and an extra 2200xp. thanks!

[{PMS}fishy]

Try clearing the CMOS and seeing what happens. Its always best to restore the defaults when installing a new CPU.

[Skiing Squirrel]

Yep. Might want to try taking out some ram

[Banetahtoh]

Why would taking out ram help? I only have 3 512mb sticks. If I cleared the CMOS, would it reset the BIOS to the original version? you clear the CMOS by setting it to clear, and then turn the computer on, and running it (even though nothing happens) for a few seconds?

edit: I cleared the cmos (as well as I know how, I hope I did it right...) and its still just spinning the fans. It does reset the bios, does it?

[new_novice]

sent it to me, i'll test it out for ya :D

seriously, 1) did you check to see if your mobo can support that speed?
2) If it does, did you play around with it before you got the new CPUs??
3) did you put the CPUs in the right way, or was any pins broke? Are those new CPUs or you bought it off of somebody?
4) If you have somebody that has a lower speed XP, try to borrow that to see if you can get it to work.
5) Try to hold either the esc or the insert button when you boot it up to see if you can.

[Skiing Squirrel]

You might have a bad ram slot. Just run one slot. Give it a shot. It happened with me.

[Banetahtoh]

Ok, I'm putting the Soltek computer on hold. I want to get the Biostar to work.

I got it to boot up, and it displayed: CMOS error, using default. And it didnt detect any drives but the floppy. It has 512mb of ram, and it reads that much. After I turned it off, and then rebooted, no change, it wont boot. It only spins the fans.

Eventually I just turned it off and left it be. that was when I came and started this thread.

Just now, I turned it on and it booted, beeped and all, and gave the same error, read only the floppy drive, and told me it found 512mb of ram and the amd 2200XP but thats it. After i tried to reboot, it just spins the fans. This is maddenning, has this happened to anyone else?

I turned it off, and I'm gonna leave it be, and then turn it on in say 15 minutes, maybe the power has to drain or something...

Do I have to set the CMOS or something? (Sorry first computer I ever build) And tell it I have HDDs?

[Banetahtoh]

new_novice - im gonna go try the esc or insert thing, and it's new, and it works.

Edit: Ok, it booted up on it's on, but I'll bet it won't do it again unless I shut it off for a while.

I didn't hold esc. Im going to reboot first, and then do it.

The CMOS error is this

CMOS checksum error - Defaults loaded

Edit II:

Blah! :mad: I tried to go into the BIOS and I got a funky screen and it froze! Grr... I rebooted, and holding ESC did nothing, so I tried again with Insert, and it did nothing also. I hope the BIOS isnt messed up...

Edit III:
If I hold DEL down when the computer boots (when It wants to grr) the BIOS opens, and works fine. But won't detect the harddrive... sigh... If I don't open the bios, the computer says no disk found, please load and hit enter, or somesuch thing. I found that my hard drive was on IDE2 so I put it on IDE1 and the CD-ROM on IDE2, and I set it to cable select, and it seemed to boot up and reboot happily, but the disk wouldn't be detected. So I changed it from 16 heads cs to 15 head cs and now it wont boot. I reset it to 16 heads, and Im leaving it alone for a minute, and Im going to see if I can get it to boot. If I can, and it still wont detect, Im going to try it set to master...

oi...

[bobt17]

ok this is just a guess but did u check to see if ur drives are set acording to where they are on the cable? i mean it sounds like u might have both of them set on master or both on slave that would explain why they arent being detected as for the error... i get that if i clear the bios all it is is saying that its loading the bios defaults i think as for it not booting up all the time..... got me lol that wild

[new_novice]

try not to screw with the settings for the hard drive, if is new, just set it on auto, don't mess with it. or go into the bios and choose the option to go back to default setting or optimized, whichever is there. Your problem happened to me a couple times too, I only had to clear the bios and everything was fine. Did you mess the mobo jumpers or switches at all?? if you did, set everything back to when it was shipped. ANother thing after you set the bios on auto detect, if it can't detect your hard drive, try reverse the cable, you might have it plugged in the wrong way.

If all that does not work, start from the basic, take EVERYTHING OFF, start from scratch if need be. Mobo, cpu.....see if there're any beep, then up to, mobo cpu ram vid card.

At the last step, How new is your mobo (setup), just bought? then see if you can replace it for another one.

another thing is if you flash your bios the wrong way you might have damaged it.

[Banetahtoh]

Ok, im gonna go over it and see what happens. Ill let you know, thanks! :)

[Banetahtoh]

*sigh*

This is getting urgent, I'm leaving for school on either sat. or sun. and if I can't get this comp running, I probably will be stuck with only the computer lab.... for who knows how long... d**nit...

Ok, it boots up, if you leave it be like I described before. And I can get into the bios. If I let it be, it tried to boot up, but can't find a disk to boot from, and asks me to insert the boot disk. I set the hard drive on IDE1 on the last connector, and set the jumpers to Master 0 16 heads; the default...

Any Ideas? :confused:

Thanks!!

[Docta_Z]

Replace your IDE Cables, sounds like they're screwed. I had a set of faulty ones once.

[snvpa]

master 0 16 heads. your hard drive jumper should be set to master. Then enter bios holding delete at startup. enable lba (large block mode) advanced chipset features i think. Then make sure auto detection is on. also double check cables and make sure two drives are not masters or slaves on one cable. Finally check the molex connectors

[Banetahtoh]

Originally posted by snvpa
master 0 16 heads. your hard drive jumper should be set to master. Then enter bios holding delete at startup. enable lba (large block mode) advanced chipset features i think. Then make sure auto detection is on. also double check cables and make sure two drives are not masters or slaves on one cable. Finally check the molex connectors

molex connectors? im going to try this, if it doesnt work, ill change the IDE cable.. that never occured to me!

edit: could the hdd be bad? ill swap in a different one...

edit II: ah! I just tried to boot into the bios, and i held the del key from the start, because it doesn't stop and give me a list of the cpu and ram anymore.. it just tries to boot (can i fix this, so it pauses and shows me the ram and cpu, and offers to let me into teh bios, setup,. f1 to continue, etc?) and because i as holding del down, it only gave me a cursor

_




like that, and froze

[new_novice]

press the pause/ break button a couple times when press reboot.

[jadams]

Last time I had a problem where the fans fould go but nothing else worked, It was my psu. May want to check that. Did you use the same psu for both boards?

Also, cables on IDE may be on backwards?

Just a few things I haven't seen mentioned yet :)

[Banetahtoh]

i got it to detect the hd and the cdrom, but now i have a major problem... when i boot from a floppy it says 'error on line 42 in config.sys" or line 28 or depending on the boot disk, its a different line. i made one here, from windows me, on a new disk, i tried other disks. I thought maybe it was this computer, so i went to bootdisk.com and got techworm, same problem. after the error, the boot stops, but the system doesnt freeze... ah!! :confused: