comp worked, then ceased, any advice?

hiya, i'm new, but i haven't an annoying and maybe interesting problem for you...
i'm upgrading a comp for school, and (its not that great) its gone wrong!

The old thing was really really depressingly bad. I bought new stuff for it (well my teacher did, its his, mines better). I got a gigabyte mother board, the K8VT800 PRO, its really nice! its a 754 socket btw. A sempron 2600 to go with it, which is a bit boring, but functional, at 1.61Ghz! An old radeon 9550SE, by connect3D, it was my mates old one (he's got a nvidia 6800GT now!), but using it for this. I've also stuck a Western Digital WD400BB 40GB HD in, which seems fine! there's a boring old LG CD drive too, 52X, standard work horse stylee. i also stuck 256mb (cos its not demanding) of samsung RAm in, its PC2700, CL2.5, 333Mhz and of course 184pin.
I have also stuck windows XP professional on, which i got courtesy of the fact its a school project.
the old HD was a seagate medalist, 8Gb, very slow... it had old bad ram (like possibly 64mb), a crappy motherboard (too old to mention, and to much hassle to find again), a really bad CD drive that was 32x and made bad noises when asked to play a CD!
I put everything together, and installed XP, it ran fine!
then, yesterday i tried to put the old hard-drive in too, because i need to transfer some data across. and its the best way to do it. the new hard drive was set as master, the old as slave. I turned it on, and it tried to boot from the old hard drive, not the new, which i found odd, so i then tried going to bios and changing things so it would boot from the new. nothing doing. since then, no matte what i do, change the HD's round, take everything out, put it back in, when i try to start the comp the screen has lines down from boot, then goes blank. the comp sounds like it continues to boot, but there's nothing appearing (i've checked the graphics card too).
so any advice would be appreciated, as i need it working soon! do you think it'd be compatibility with anything or what? Thanks

papercut,

First let me state that I don't have that mobo or processor so I'm talking in generalities here.

From your description, it sounds like the system didn't recognize master/slave properly. Were both HDDs (new & old) on the same IDE ribbon cable?? If the system tried to boot from the old HDD (with it's old OS and drivers) it isn't surprising that things went south.

I would suggest removing the old HDD, resetting CMOS, resetting BIOS to default, and making sure new OS hasn't been corrupted. Then I would attach the old HDD to a seperate IDE and retrieve what I wanted from it.

Hope this helps!

CoachB

Just to let you know with newer drives you have to set it to run as master with a slave, because there is an options that also works as master but it is only if there is no other driver on the same ide cable. Is the computer still posting? if it is then pull the master driver out and read on top of it how to set it to master with a slave, if that still doesn't work put the old drive in place of the cd-rom you probably wont' need it for copying files anyway.

hi guys, thanks!
I'll try what you said Avg, find out how to set it to master with slave, and i've only just thought of this, i'll try a different monitor (not likely to be the problem, but no harm in trying!)
the problem was more that, it seemed to boot OK, you can hear it booting, but the screen goes blank, just after starting up. i press the button, it goes beep, and then the screen appears with memory and stuff on, but lines all down it, then blank, and .....nothing!
and to coachb22, yeah, they were both on the same IDE cable, then different ones, then different IDE sockets, everything! how, if i can, can i reset the cmos without there being anything to see? if i can, please say! as far as i can see, it doesn't get far enough to even start loading XP....
thanks guys! its just so annoying 'cos i had it running perfectly, i was playing carmageddon tdr2000 and driver on it perfect, not a single glitch, and was going to try some newer games...! ah well....

So your getting the lines in the post screen? If that is so then it is a problem with the card itself, but I do hope I'm dead wrong on this one.

papercut,

CMOS is usually reset by removing the battery from the motherboard and/or moving a jumper on the board. Look in the boards manual for directions. Then to get into the BIOS you have to repeatedly and rapidly press the "DELETE" key when the computer is first starting until the BIOS screen comes up. There should be an option to "Reset to Default Settings".
The video card will have trouble giving you a good display if the drivers have been corrupted by the failed boot attempt with the old HDD.
My first priority would be to forget dealing with the old HDD for the moment and concentrate on getting the system back-up and stable. It can get REAL insane trying to correct 2-3 issues all at once.
(Might want to remove the video card and reseat it just to make sure it hasn't gotten partially disconnected during all the parts swapping).

CoachB

thanks guys.
i also really really hope the graphics card isn't dead, unfortunately, i dont have another one spare at the mo to stick in there to check. as soon as i have, i will try that.
And CoachB22, i'll try that, i know where the battery, i just need to find the correct jumper, as just taking the battery out, then putting it back in didn't work.
tried taking out and putting graphics card in again, didn't work...
lets hope i get it sorted soon!

those are stupidly nice comps you have there too Avg! just read the specs, nice!
my mate has just bought a comp for £570, thats about $900-$950 with a 3.6Ghz cpu, 1Gb ram, and stuff! (thats really cheap over here)

I hate it when stuff like that happens. Makes me not want to touch another persons computer again.
Anyway, what psu did you use?
If you used the psu from the old rig it might be that it's not powerfull enough. Adding that last HD might have pushed it over the top. It's a long shot, but there are many people today that learns the hard way that a good psu can make all the difference. Including myself, but lets not talk about that...

papercut,

More aggressive CMOS reset directions:
Unplug the computer, remove CMOS battery, push RUN button on computer to discharge any stored juice. Leave CMOS battery out for a few minutes (longer is better). Replace battery (might want to get a new one while we are at it), reconnect power cord. Cross fingers!

To enter BIOS:
Push RUN button on computer and begin rapidly and repeatedly pressing "DELETE" button until BIOS screen appears. This should happen just after you see the screen "with memory and stuff".

If screen goes blank and BIOS won't display, you probably ought to try a new video card. Display of memory stuff and BIOS screen is elementary (i.e. doesn't require OS or card drivers) SO if screen goes blank, card is probably fubar.

CoachB

thanks huys
i know the power supply is OK, i think (from memory) its 350w, and its not running anything demanding, and no, its not the old one, the old one was 150w! thats old!
and on monday i'll try the 'aggressive' methods.
if that doesn't work, i think i'll start by sending the motherboard back, or rather, to the manufacturer, under the warranty. (that is again after trying another graphics card of course)
thanks!

papercutout said:

i know the power supply is OK, i think (from memory) its 350w, and its not running anything demanding, and no, its not the old one, the old one was 150w! thats old!

Click to expand...

What brand? There are some brands that seems to rate their psus while dropping acid. I had a 450w(Qtec) that in it's last days didn't even manage to power a shuttle style rig with onboard gfx and a Duron 1.6ghz.
It's probably not the psu, but try another one if possible to rule it out.

i cant remember what brand, its noting special, but its not dieing, its running healthily
as i said, its really strange, the comp sounds like it actually boots properly, but i'm getting nothing on the screen! there we are, another slight problem for you....