newly purchased system wont boot

[timmygrimm]

I just recieved all my parts from newegg...

ga-7dx+
athlon xp 1800
mitsui black floppy
maxtor quiet drive 40g (one for now)
liteon cdr
+ fans heatsink power supply, etc...

i switch on the power supply, press the power on button - the fans start, the hard drive lights up and appears to be functioning.

the floppy does nothing at all and my monitor remains on standby mode. i checked the connnections to the floppy and the video card and ram are all snug in their positions.

could this be a problem with the floppy or the video card? the site that assisted me with building the machine (the site suggested by allen h) recommended i briefly unplug the cpu fan and see if the cpu heats up - the cpu does heat up, so it appears to be working.

any advice would be extremely helpful.

thanks guys.

-tim

[Hiwatt25]

Does the computer beep at you at all? Sometimes if things are a miss, the motherboard will give a series of beeps that actually tell you what is going wrong during the post test. If so, pay close attention to the pattern of the beeps and let someone here know what it is. [img]images/icons/smile.gif[/img]

Oh, one other thing. Has the hard drive been formatted and does it have an operating system on it?

[timmygrimm]

thanks for your reply - the computer isn't giving me any beeps - but i'm worried that i might not be hooked up to my speaker correctly... although i dont know if incorrect speaker polarity would cause the speaker to malfunction.

one other thing i think might be the problem is this: when i installed my motherboard, i originally used metal spacers to seperate it from the case. these spacers (which came w/ the evercase) caused the motherboard to sit too high and the keyboard, mouse and parallel ports were all out of line. i removed the spacers and allowed the motherboard to sit on the case (the case has bumps to elevate the board in the appropriate places). could this be causing a grounding problem that would be preventing the machine from booting?

the hard drive has not been formatted nor does it have an os... but i thought this step came after configuring the bios. i do have a 3.5 system disk though.

guess this wasn't quite as easy as i thought....

-tim

[JMS40]

There are two standard spacer heights... 1/4" and 1/2". Most MB's come with both.

Originally posted by timmygrimm:
i originally used metal spacers to seperate it from the case. these spacers (which came w/ the evercase) caused the motherboard to sit too high and the keyboard, mouse and parallel ports were all out of line. -tim

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[flashbak]

Have you tried removing then reinstalling the CPU into the ZIF socket? Don't take offense but are you sure you have the CPU oriented into the ZIF socket correctly (pin1 orientation)? You also have memory installed in the closest position memory slot to the CPU, correct? Also check the power harness going to the motherboard is seated all the way into the connector.

[Allen Hallada]

You can certainly create a short in the motherboard and you should be using plastic spacers between the motherboard and the case.
My bet is your memory is not seated correctly or you have a bad motherboard.
Start out by :
1. Reseat your Video card
2. Disconnect your floppy drive and CD/CDRW etc.
3. Reseat your ram, just use one stick for now and put it in the slot closest to the CPU
4. Connect only one hard drive to the Primary IDE port.
5. Remove all other cards
6. Disconnect all case fans from motherboard (not CPU fan).

Give it a go. If it doesn't work, then try your other ram stick in the first slot. If that doesn't work send that motherboard back for an A7M266 or A7V333.

Allen [img]images/icons/wink.gif[/img]

[timmygrimm]

thanks for the replies everyone,

i think i have traced the problem to a system fan(?!?) (thanks allen) it seems to boot fine until i hook it up.

i still can't get the floppy to boot but at least i can get to the bios and seem to be on the right track.

thanks again

-tim

thanks again.

[Stone Knife]

timmy-
Mabie the BIOS is set to boot off the CD-ROM and not off the floppy at all... something you might want to check.

My machine is set to boot from CD and does not check the floppy during routine boot-ups...

Might try putting an OS install CD in the CD-ROM drawer and crank 'er up..

[timmygrimm]

now everything seems to be working, i'm about to install Windows ME

kick arse!

hopefully soon i'll be enjoying pro tools heaven.

-tim