I'm doing my first build, and I'm h

[Kalisperas]

I'm doing my first build, and I'm having more problems. At first my BIOS wouldn't recognize my hard drive, I got that fixed, and upon rebooting the screen just stayed black after posting, and my D-Bracket LED's were stuck in the position that the manual says is "initializing video adapter". I cleared the CMOS, rebooted, and it booted up fine. I let it run overnight, and the next day I played around with it a bit to make sure everything was working, and rebooted. Black screen after posting again. Cleared CMOS, rebooted, booted into Windows just fine. Rebooted again, black screen after posting again. Cleared CMOS again, rebooted...nothing. Tried again...nothing. I've tried different BIOS settings, loading the default BIOS settings, and it refuses to display anything after posting. I've tried booting from the Windows XP CD to the same result. I pulled out the video card, re-seated it, to the same result...twice. Also, I'd assume that at least when booting from my hard drive, I'd hear the startup sound if Windows successfully booted and simply didn't display and video, but I don't hear anything. The HD LED or CD LED (depending on which I'm attempting to boot from) just flashes for awhile as the drive spins as if it were attempting to boot, then it just stops, then the machine just sits there, motionless, silent, with it's eerie blue light from the neon tube, mocking me and all the money I've poured into a big, glowing paperweight.

Any suggestions? This has me really frustrated, and I've got to say that nothing has ever made me appreciate my Mac more than the two days I've had a PC .

These are my specs:

Mobo: MSI KT3 Ultra2
RAM: 2 x 256 GeIL PC2700
GFX: MSI GeForce4 ti4200 128
CPU: Athlon XP2000
PSU: PowerUp 350W
HD: Western Digital SE 80GB
CDRW: Lite-On 40x12x48
Windows XP Home

Thanks!

 

[Kalisperas]

Correction: I just watched the LED's on my D-bracket for their whole sequence, and it appears that one of them is dead, so I don't know whether this light is supposed to be red or green when is gets stuck. If it's red, it means "initializing video adapter", and if it's green, it means "Booting OS". At this point, the latter seems more likely, as the screen displays the BIOS fine, but if that's the case, why wouldn't it boot from the Windows CD? And why wouldn't it boot off the hard drive when it ran fine overnight, and booted fine twice?

 

[ski]

It could be caused by a bad video card, memory, CPU, or MB.
Try the memory in different slots, or try single memory sticks if you have more than one.
If that does not work, check the CMOS battery's voltage for a 3V reading.
If still no luck, then place the MB on a piece of cardboard to see if there's a grounding problem.
If nothing and you are not getting any beeps during startup, then swapping out the above major components or having them tested is the only way to nail down the cause.

 

[ski]

I submitted my post right before your 2nd one arrived.
Are you getting a display or not?
If you are, then is it displaying intermittently or all of the time during startup/

 

[Kalisperas]

It always displays during posting, but when it goes to boot, the screen just goes black and stays black. The hard drive spins as if it's trying to boot, but eventually stops. I can't boot from my Windows CD either. I just took out my modem (only PCI card), disconnected my neon and all but one case fan, reseated the video card, and tried booting with each stick of RAM seperately, as well as clearing the CMOS. On my last attempt, the Windows loading screen came up for a couple seconds, but then went to black again.

 

[Win98User]

Suggestion - ring up the place you got the stuff from - Tell them that you have put the stuff together and nothing is happening. Don't tell them it was working because they will just tell you that you have broken it.

See what they will do for you.

I think ski has it right - so you need to be looking at the warranties.

Regards.

 

[ceh4702]

Try getting windows to start in safe mode (F8) before windows starts should do it. This may or may not work. If it does you may be able to get it to work.

This may also be a problem with corrupt files on the hard drive and have nothing to do with your hard drive. It could be working fine but the data in the file is bad or an entery in a file could be bad. You could try to reinstall the OS and see if that fixes it.

Sometimes there is a more complicated problem with the video card for VIA based chipset motherboards. Like a 4-in-1 issue. Also some motherboards have an install disk to use after you install the MB that helps the OS to see the special MB hardwared devices. This is kind of like patching the OS.

If you can boot with a windows boot disk with CDROM support and read the hard drive then it is working. If you do not like my post feel free to point out your opinion or my errors.

 

[ski]

FWIW, I read in another string somewhere(it may have been here) about the same problem happening at the Windows loading screen, and it was caused by a bad CPU.
You may want to focus on that regarding warranty returns.

 

[ShadowFox333]

try going to control panel, system, device manager and remove the video drivers and reboot. When windows comes up and wants to install the new drivers cancel and let windows come up using the default PnP. IF You can consistantly come up this way it is the video drivers. I just had this problem and could not run the dual frame rate Ati rage fury pro maxx on the mobo had to get a 32 meg nvidia. Either the MOBO mfg or the Video MFG may have FAQ's on their equipment.
Bob

 

[doubleJ]

Kalisperas,

I had the same problem with a new dell 4400. I called tech support and jumped through the hoops. The short of the long they had me replace the MB and still no go. They then had me replace the CPU and all is good. This is after stripping it down to nothing but the power supply and MB. I then added things back to the MB. The PC would post, however; when I added the RAM I got no post.

Hope this helps. Just for the record the symptoms where exactly the same as yours. The PC would power but had a black screen.

doubleJ