Hello, urgent help with trying to get new BIOS/mobo to boot?

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publiusdiamond

New Member
I just got a new mobo and CPU. Installed them and can switch on successfully, but get somewhat stuck on the BIOS. The mobo has RAID and I have the HD plugged into SATA slot 3. I think I've enabled this because it detects the hard drive, and I'm pretty sure it detects the CD drive too because I've seen the name of it flash up somewhere.
What do I do!?
The furthest I've got is one of two messages:

NVidia Boot Agent 201.0462
CopyRight NVidia Corp 1998-2004 etc.
PXE-E61: Media test failure, check cable
PXE-M0F: Exiting NVidia Boot Agent.

or this:

Press F11 to start recovery (2 second countdown) whether you press F11 or not, the screen goes either completely blank or just has a blinking crosshair which never goes anywhere?
uhhh...help please?

Cheers, Publius
 
It seems you're trying to boot into windows, and it's not liking the boot device you're using. That'd be because when you change over motherboard you often need to do a repair install of Windows, for the correct drivers etc to be installed for the hardware you're using it with. Try that, if you have your original windows cd to hand.
 
If you enter the BIOS (which shouldn't be a problem) and select the CD Drive as the boot device, then it'll recognise it. You'll almost certainly have to press F6 as you're entering the setup to install the SATA and RAID drivers, and if you select a repair install, you should have all your info kept.
 
Well I'm still having problems, I reach one of many dead ends. The one I get most often is "Preparing System Recovery Options" which loads about one bar, and then stops responding completely. Another one I get often, when it detects the disc that came with the motherboard, I get: "Error: Hard drive not installed"
Anyone have any ideas? Any BIOS settings I've missed?
 
You shouldn't be trying to boot using the motherboard driver disk, but the hologrammed Windows disk. The motherboard driver disk has no information on it that you'll need, until you're at least half way through the installation procedure, and even then you may not need it at all.
 
Problem is, my PC didn't come with a Windows disk, PC World don't give you one with your PC unfortunately.
Am I completely screwed?
I'm also incredibly frustrated because I just realised my old processor was a 775 socket instead of the older one I thought it was, and I could have just got a Pentium compatible mobo without having to get a completely new prcoessor (£120).
Computers are frustrating.
 
You'll have to speak to PC World, because if they haven't provided a disk then they should have. Often you may have a non-hologrammed disk that's specifically for reinstalls of the operating system, but you'd probably know if you had one of those.

If need be, you can buy another hologrammed disk from eBay, OEM, for around £50. Make sure that you look for the key words in the listing, unregistered, genuine hologrammed disk, certificate of authenticity. It's not the ideal solution, but you will need to have a Windows disk to perform the repair install. It'll be a different serial number, but it'll still detect the old installation and allow you to write over the top of it.
 
Well here's the deal, I'm taking my whole PC back to the little shop I got the parts from, the guy said I should take it to him if I had problems. If he can get it past the BIOS and run it I will be happy. If he can't then for the time being I'm just going to get a refund on all the parts, and return to my old stuff. It means I can't play games like Oblivion but at least I'll have a working computer.
Thanks for your help, I'll keep you updated.
 
I realize that Im not always the most technically inclined, but he said that he's hooked up his HDD to the sata 3 slot, would that cause a problem? shouldn't it be on sata 1?
 
asdfguy said:
I realize that Im not always the most technically inclined, but he said that he's hooked up his HDD to the sata 3 slot, would that cause a problem? shouldn't it be on sata 1?
Click to expand...
Each sata connection is on its own channel, and a hard drive can quite successfully be plugged into any sata slot and function correctly. In fact, when overclocking a motherboard with 4 sata slots, the first two can be interfered with by raising the FSB, so in that situation it's advisable to use sata slots 3 and 4.
 
magicman said:
In fact, when overclocking a motherboard with 4 sata slots, the first two can be interfered with by raising the FSB, so in that situation it's advisable to use sata slots 3 and 4.
Click to expand...


I hope I'm not taking over this persons thread, but why? Why don't 3 & 4 interfere w/ OC'ing? And how would you know if there is interferance?
 
Some have SATA on the PCI bus, some chipsets like the NF3 have two locked SATA ports and two unlocked SATA ports, but in most situations you have the SATA linked to the FSB, so you overclock the FAB you overclock the drives. But it varies depending on the board you have. Some people would recommend using an expansion controller card if you were going to overclock using SATA drives.

You'd probably know if there were interference pretty soon after overclocking began - most people don't get above a FSB overclock of 5 before the drives crap out.
 
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