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Building a new computer

Discussion in 'Technical Discussion' started by Hez, Jan 17, 2012.

  1. Hez

    Hez

    Oldbie
    So my friend is building a new computer, and I helped him put it together. The bios screen boots up fine, but it takes a while to turn on. The hard drive also beeps a ton before anything comes on. The RAM and Power supply are fine, so I'm guessing the problem is in one of three places. Bios is set up wrong, Hard Drive is bad, or motherboard is bad. The motherboard is a foxconn (http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813186205), and the hard drive is a 500 gig seagate. He's using the onboard video card currently. Whenever I try to boot windows, it does a blue screen. I tried to run just Ubuntu from the disk, and it gives me a bunch of garbage after I click on run from disk. Any suggestions at all?
     
  2. DimensionWarped

    DimensionWarped

    Erinaceous! Oldbie
    How exactly do you know the RAM and power supply are fine? Did you try them in another system? RAM is generally able to cause problems like this, although not necessarily consistently.
    It's generally pretty hard to screw up motherboard bios just for the purpose of installing an operating system.

    You didn't actually mention anything about installing though, so what's the story there? If Ubuntu fails to boot from a disk that already had the operating system on it, all kinds of system specific configuration could be screwed up, probably the most popular one of which being X. And to the uninitiated, failure messages related to that could easily be considered garbage. And don't even get me started on just trying to load Windows from anything other than the machine you originally installed it on.
     
  3. Hez

    Hez

    Oldbie
    Tried ram in my computer and it was fine, and I also have a power supply tester. Its 650 watts so it should be more than enough...although there is a switch on the supply that changes some sort of voltage, but I can't remember. Ill check next time I'm there..I can also take screen shots of the error message. I get a master drive sata 3 error, and when I put the harddrive in slot 3, it says slave instead of master.
     
  4. DimensionWarped

    DimensionWarped

    Erinaceous! Oldbie
    You didn't answer my main question. Are you installing the operating system fresh in each case or are you just trying to boot from an operating system that was already installed on the drive?

    EDIT: I wasn't even aware SATA did the whole master/slave thing. I guess you could try figuring out which SATA port the hard drive was in and try and move it to the first.
    I've never actually had to deal with jumper configurations, but if you see something like in this image...
    http://www.google.com/imgres?um=1&hl=en&safe=off&biw=1920&bih=965&tbm=isch&tbnid=r4bcGlwGEqg8MM:&imgrefurl=http://www.custom-build-computers.com/SATA-Hard-Disk-Jumpers.html&docid=PZrOy3tOaWLgfM&imgurl=http://www.custom-build-computers.com/image-files/jumpers.jpg&w=571&h=445&ei=7T8VT-CEDISXtwf-ru2lAg&zoom=1&iact=rc&dur=394&sig=104862119751522293733&page=1&tbnh=137&tbnw=168&start=0&ndsp=46&ved=1t:429,r:11,s:0&tx=99&ty=52

    You might need to figure out where the jumper needs to be in order to keep it from forcing some kind of slave mode.
     
  5. Hez

    Hez

    Oldbie
    Whoops, didn't even see that. Everything is brand new, nothing has been installed ever. It was freshly built. From my understanding, I didn't think SATA was capable of master and slave? Guess I was wrong?
     
  6. Hez

    Hez

    Oldbie
    IRQL_NOT_LESS_OR_EQUAL

    I'm getting this when I try and run the Windows CD
     
  7. Even though the RAM worked in another computer, I would still suggest letting memtest run to completion. I used to get that exact same BSOD regularly, until I replaced my 2GB stick of ram with another, then it went away, Memory issues tend to be extremely unstable, and like you, a second computer booted fine with the "bad stick" but still failed memtest.
     
  8. Hez

    Hez

    Oldbie
    [​IMG]

    There's what Windows 7 disk does. A Ubuntu disk gives me similar garbage, but more of it.

    I understand usually this is because of hardware conflicts and what not, but I've never seen it happen when there is litterally nothing in the computer besides the onboard video card, one stick of memory, a disk drive, and a brand new never used hard drive (which this screen also happens when the hard drive is not present).
     
  9. SteelBrush

    SteelBrush

    603e Member
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    Tramadol, Tamazepam and finding a reason to exist.
    Try resetting the bios by the jumpers, or remove the CMOS battery and reinsert it. If the bios has been incorrectly configured, this will take it back to standard settings
     
  10. DimensionWarped

    DimensionWarped

    Erinaceous! Oldbie
    Is there any other hardware in the machine aside from the motherboard, ram, optical drive and hard drive? I've seen that error pop up a couple times for PCI devices.
     
  11. Hez

    Hez

    Oldbie
    I swapped the RAM around and reset the BIOS, that did the trick. Now we're having the problem of the HDMI cable making the picture look like shit. It's as if the saturation bar was moved to max... :\
     
  12. A small hint: When you build a "new" system please don't go for Foxconn Board. Just... don't. Even ECS and Biostar are of better quality ;)
     
  13. SteelBrush

    SteelBrush

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    Have you installed the drivers for your monitor yet? I was using a CRT with my PC until I bought an HD LCD. The LCD looked like shit. I installed the drivers provided with the monitor, it gave me extra controls and resolution settings. My monitor now looks great.
     
  14. Elratauru

    Elratauru

    Little Shiny Emurralds Member
    Words of wisdom here. I'd always recommend Gigabyte and ASUS though :P...but that's when you're looking for high-end stuff.

    About the HDMI thing, I'd recommend using a common dvi or vga cable for your monitor actually, no need for hdmi if you don't have speakers in that thing...but you may have so yeah :V
     
  15. I always felt the best compromise between price and performance is AsRock. They make good stuff.
     
  16. SteelBrush

    SteelBrush

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    I always use Gigabyte boards. They make more basic mATX boards that can be picked up for around £35. They lack the features of a high end board but retain the quality.
     
  17. kuroshi

    kuroshi

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    foobar2000 components, many related to emulation; Cog, an audio player for Mac OS X
    Yeah, SATA does not have any master/slave issues.

    And that monitor issue with HDMI is because your LCD monitor is reporting itself as an HDTV, and most video card drivers will see that and pull stupid crap, like adding overscan to the picture, and/or over sharpening everything. Installing any drivers which come with the monitor may fix it, but if you're unlucky, you may have to resort to some sort of EDID hacks. At best, registry changes with the video card drivers. At worst, you may end up like this guy and hack your monitor. Let's hope it doesn't come to that, shall we?

    I can also vouch for Gigabyte. Even though I have only owned one of their boards, it has been faithful and functional for the past three years I've owned it. I'll probably buy a Gigabyte board again when I plan out my next upgrade around April, the projected launch of Ivy Bridge and Kepler.
     
  18. HarroSIN

    HarroSIN

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    ASRock makes cheap shit, but they're always on top of their game in terms of the latest and greatest. The first and only board I ever bought from them was when PCI-E was just coming out in 2004/2005 -- this P.O.S. had PCI, AGP 8x and PCI-E expansion slots. Unheard of at the time.

    Anyway, the newest mainboard I bought was the AMD ASUS Crosshair Formula V. Overkill for anything other than gaming.