I Could Use Some Help

S

senator91

New Member
Well, I got a whole bunch of stuff for Christmas as I have have been wanting to build my own PC for a while. Anyhow, I put everything together and nothing but the fans work. No video, no post, nothing. Here's a rundown of what I have:
Antec P182 Case
Corsair 550W PSU
2 Gigs. Corsair DDR2
Gigabyte P-35 DS3R Motherboard
Q6600 CPU
Nvidea PCI-E Video card

I've checked, and rechecked the connections, standoffs, etc. I'm stumped. Ant suggestions would be appreciated.
 
Do you have a hard drive and dvd or cd drive connected? Also, what happens when you turn it on? Im missing your question.
 
don't connect those... not interesting

take out your mobo and put it on something that doesn't conduct electricity
connect everything and try again.

it could always be your graphics card. try switching it if you have the possibility
 
ukulele_ninja said:
Do you have a hard drive and dvd or cd drive connected? Also, what happens when you turn it on? Im missing your question.
Click to expand...

Yeah, you're right, I left a few things out. I'm reusing my DVD burner and my harddrive from my existing PC, so there should have been an operating system and an optical drive present, but the new system does nothing. There's no option for entering the bios, no beeps of any kind, just the fans run. I have the 24 pin connector attached as well as the extra 4 pin to the CPU. No video at all, and talking not even a cursor.
 
You won't get a cursor on POST.

Unplug the: HD, Optical drive

And try again.

After that, take everything out of the case and rebuild it on a non electric conducting floor/counter. If it starts, there's something wrong with the standoffs... or you didn't use them...

Try using onboard (if you have it) video too.
 
oscaryu1 said:
You won't get a cursor on POST.

Unplug the: HD, Optical drive

And try again.

After that, take everything out of the case and rebuild it on a non electric conducting floor/counter. If it starts, there's something wrong with the standoffs... or you didn't use them...

Try using onboard (if you have it) video too.
Click to expand...

I'll try assembling it outside of the case. The standoffs are built into the case and line up perfectly with the motherboard holes, so unless I'm missing a step I don't think it's a standoff issue, but I'm really out of ideas.
 
Well, I installed just the basics outside of the case, and now I get 3 beeps followed by continuous beeps. I can't seem to find what these beeps mean, but nothing appears at all on the monitor.
 
senator91 said:
Well, I installed just the basics outside of the case, and now I get 3 beeps followed by continuous beeps. I can't seem to find what these beeps mean, but nothing appears at all on the monitor.
Click to expand...

The number of beeps is supposed to help identify the problem, how many continuous beeps? Though I'm not certain, I've heard 3 beeps followed by 3,4,5,beeps could mean the Keyboard controller or video controller failed.
 
senator91 said:
Well, I installed just the basics outside of the case, and now I get 3 beeps followed by continuous beeps. I can't seem to find what these beeps mean, but nothing appears at all on the monitor.
Click to expand...

Great. We got a start.

Get your CMOS brand, and google the beeps. For example: AWARD Beep code.

Google that, and you'll get a little page with like "3 beeps = something".
 
Well, here's an update. Apparently the 3 beeps was memory related. I say this because after switching around the memory(dual channel) and eliminating one stick I can get to the BIOS with only the single beep. It also seems to have cleared the continuous beeps that followed the original 3. I've tried both sticks individually and the same one makes it go screwy every time. I'll try to return the memory.
Anyway, now to the next problem. I can't get it to boot from the hard drive. It goes through the motions and then I get the "windows did not start successfully" screen. It then gives the option of "safe mode" etc. at it just cycles. I can put this hard drive back in my other computer and it boots up just fine.
Any ideas?
 
So, you're taking a hard drive from another PC and attempting to run it on the new build? Are you running XP or Vista on this HD?
 
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mep916 said:
So, you're taking a hard drive from another PC and attempting to run it on the new build? Are you running XP or Vista on this HD?
Click to expand...

Yeah it was already in use on what was supposed to be my "old" computer. It has XP professional on it. Actually, I have another spare drive with nothing but an operating system on it and same thing.
 
Do you have an XP installation CD? You can try using the "fixmbr" and "fixboot" command lines in the recovery console. Boot to the XP CD and select "Repair." If you're lucky, XP will write a new boot record and allow you to run the OS on your new build. If that works, you'll need to uninstall all the old drivers.

Reinstalling the OS is probably the best option, however.
 
mep916 said:
Do you have an XP installation CD? You can try using the "fixmbr" and "fixboot" command lines in the recovery console. Boot to the XP CD and select "Repair." If you're lucky, XP will write a new boot record and allow you to run the OS on your new build. If that works, you'll need to uninstall all the old drivers.

Reinstalling the OS is probably the best option, however.
Click to expand...

I reinstalled the OS and it runs fine thanks for the input. I don't get why I couldn't run the hard drive as it was with the new computer though. I figured it would run fine.
 
Any time you change a motherboard, you need to do a fresh install. There are many reasons why it requires this, but mostly it's the drivers for the motherboard and chipsets. When you install an OS, it looks at the motherboard to know how to run certain things. When you change the motherboard, the OS no longer knows what to do. Thats just a simple explanation, if you want a full blown explanation, google it.
 
Yeah, I've heard of people successfully booting an old OS into a new build, but it's generally a bad idea and almost never works.
 
paratwa said:
Any time you change a motherboard, you need to do a fresh install. There are many reasons why it requires this, but mostly it's the drivers for the motherboard and chipsets. When you install an OS, it looks at the motherboard to know how to run certain things. When you change the motherboard, the OS no longer knows what to do. Thats just a simple explanation, if you want a full blown explanation, google it.
Click to expand...

Basically like trying to use a ATI driver on nVidia cards. Some things don't mix.

If your motherboard blew and you bought a exact same one... that'll work.

But if you went from a SiS chipset to a nVidia chipset, most likely you'll need a whole new reinstall.
 
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