New build problem. 775 XFire eSataII (mb) & 1GB 8600GT (gpu)

[Andrew]

Please forgive me in advance for any ignorance or plain silly statements.

I have just put together a new pc but cannot get my monitor to power up, upon boot.

Mainboard: 775 XFire eSataII
Memory: 2GB PC-6400 (new) + 2GB PC-5300 (from old build)
GPU: 1GB 8600GT (no power needed)

The board has no onboard graphics so how do i install the new card if i cant even get the monitor on.?

[smack323]

welcome to the forums... are you sure the 8600 doesnt need power? i have one in a computer at home and i needed to connect it to the power suppy. do you have the make and model number?

the card should give you a basic disply allowing you to install the drivers.

[Andrew]

definitely no power supply to the card. gts requires power. not gt.

my monitor only powers up upon receipt of a signal. and my monitor wont even power up. i dont understand how i meant to get around this...

[DMB2000uk]

Does it sound like the rest of the PC is booting properly though?

And does the monitor go into a power save mode, or not turn on at all?

Dan

[Andrew]

yes. it sounds as if its booted up just fine. and it sits there...

my monitor... when i shutdown my pc, the monitor automatically goes into standby mode and powers down. not off...

when i boot my pc up, or should i say my old build pc, the monitor powers up as soon as it receives a signal...

upon booting up of the new build, the monitor does nothing. and i think its because it doesn't recognise the graphics card yet... because its not installed, ie drivers and such...

...i think i've seen this before, in a similar way... on a pc which had onboard graphics. a gpu was added and initially the monitor would not power up. (plugged into the new gpu) the monitor was returned to the onboard graphics, rebooted then the drivers for the card installed etc etc.... then rebooted with monitor attached again to the new gpu... worked fine. am i remembering this correctly? does any of this sound familiar to anyone?

difference here is, i havent got onboard graphics to fall back on. this is starting to get on my chesticles.....

[DMB2000uk]

Well the graphics card should work without the proper drivers if it hasn't got another graphics card to try and use (it falls back on some generic ones).

Does your board have a LCD Post screen or normally beep when it has completed POST? Just wondering if there is something you can do to make sure it is powering up properly.

You probably have already done this but check all the power connectors again on the board and components. If it still won't boot, strip down to just a CPU and the mobo, and see if it does some POST beeps at you (provided it has a mobo speaker?). Then add one stick of RAM, then the graphics card. If you still aren't getting any video out do you have a different video card you can test with?

Oh, and while we are checking things in the case, try resetting the CMOS.

Dan

[Andrew]

will do all you suggested in the morning and report back.

thanks dan

[smack323]

I was just checking out the specs on the board. there are two slots for card - do you have the card in the pci-e slot closest to the CPU? Also did you try plugging in a 4 pin molex into the motherboard?

[Andrew]

Right. Phew! Ok, Dan I stripped it down to nothing, attached a speaker to the board and started from the chip onwards. When finally attaching the gpu and rebooting, the monitor sprung into life. So, thats great. Job done.

However, i then encountered a problem with my hard drive not being detected. The hard drive recently removed from my old build in perfectly good working order. It would boot up right to the point of the green vista stripes then blue screen and die instantly.

The only thing i could get to work for some reason was using an old xp disc to reinstall xp, and sit it next to my vista install. then once in, i could dual boot into vista. striking me as strange, i checked my tracks and realised that it was probably just a dodgy connection to the hdd, because from not being detected, i was suddenly reinstalling xp. too late.... xp was installed, .... problem is i am not getting the dual boot option? it boots up with xp automatically.

In system, Advanced, Startup and Recovery, Settings - it is set to display multiple / other operating systems, but only lists xp?

In disk management console, c drive is vista. and e drive is xp. e drive is set to (boot) whilst c drive is set to (system) but i dont have any options relating to a reallocation of boot sequence?

i know i can modify the boot log file, but dont know how to do it, and i guess if i messed that up, nothing would boot up??

any suggestions would be gratefully appreciated.....


Andrew

[DMB2000uk]

Is the motherboard a new one since the last PC?

It will most likely have a different chipset? So you should really re-install vista with a new build.

However as you have 4GB of RAM and 1GB of Video memory, you are going to run into problems installing vista. So you need to strip back to one gig of RAM at the maximum (so that all the memory in the system is under 2GB) then try installing vista again.

Dan

[Andrew]

hmmmm, im baffled. i am now connceted to the net via my old build. this hdd works fine in the old build, but not in the new. but your right, at the time of testing i had 3.5GB of ram installed. for some reason one of the 1GB sticks wasn't happy in there, and so reverted down to a 512MB i had lying around. all of the 3.5GB of ram is recognised in the new build, but again as soon as the stripes come on screen it blue screens and immediately restarts...

so i guess next test is to remove some RAM?

and what about the dual boot option? does anybody know how i need to modify the boot log file????

[DMB2000uk]

Try running vista's equivalent of FIXMBR and FIXBOOT (I forget which one it is that writes the new OS choices) but that should overlay vista's bootloader back on and let you choose vista as an option.

Is it really not an option to back up all the data (from within xp) and reload vista entirely?

Dan

[martini161]

i agree with dan, if you changed your build that much i would recommend a fresh start

[Andrew]

ok guys, thanks for all your help.

i scanned my hard drive using several different programs to find it was 'BAD'. Something about the OS starting outside of the 1024 boot cylinder something or other....

i removed one of the partitions, and reinstalled xp. everything is now working fine... my next move is to arrange the cable management and then install vista again.

thanks for your help again!