Please Help URGENT

[gibboap]

A have a computer of a friends that i am building and the parts have arrived, build etc when the station is booted up the system goes thru POST etc (I CAN GET INTO BIOS) after POST a blinking underscore comes up _

 

i cant even get into win install,

 

in BIOS the system is showing all ok, CPU RAM HDD and cd drives, (spec below)

 

so i made sure they were in correct order (boot to cd) and SAME....

 

another thing the comp powers off after a min or so

 

please any ideas she needs her comp for work

 

MSI P35 PLATINUM S775

Intel E6600 Core2Duo 2.40GHz

Corsair TwinX 2GB DDR2 8500DOM

256M GBYTE NX86T256H 8600GT

 

etc

[Midget]

I have that EXACT set up.... actually i lie i have an E6700 but anyway

 

have you tried any other boot CDs? Get Hiren's Boot CD and try the miniWin98 from that. what are you trying to boot? is it a shady copy of windows? have you tried linux? are you remembering to hit the any key when it says to?

[steve]

A few suggestions:

 

Does the PSU have enough power? 450+W?

 

Try disconnecting everything else - CD drives etc, until just hard drive.

 

I've had issues in the past with card readers / floppy drives / usb drives

[gibboap]

the PSU is a 550w (u did get me thinking id done somthing silly then tho)

have tried disconnecting even connecting a totally different cd drive,

 

yes it was a shady copy but i have tried a real vista one and same

 

i have just finished rebuilding it as the cpu fan was the shitty s775 standard one which fall off, put a spare one in.......NOW I GET NO PIC!!!!!!!!!!

 

AGHHHHHHHHHHHH

[strawberry]

check the processor is properly seated, and try resetting the bios.

[maniac]

Check the CPU fan is registering a speed in the BIOS. If the computer thinks the CPU fan isn't turning, then it probably won't let the machine boot to avoid damage to the CPU.

 

I have had a faulty CPU fan before that looked like it was fine, but it wasn't sending a signal back to the motherboard to confirm it was working, and that stopped my computer from booting. Normally it would tell you what the error was, but it depends how you've got your error handling set in the BIOS.

 

Mike.

[Guest AustenLowe]

have you tried another Hardisk, one that has an os already installed even if it bsod's. I had a simular fault many years ago when a hard drive was set to master and a cdrom was set to cable select but it was located at the master connector. The system worked fine for over a year and suddenly just stopped booting because of this, furthermore the bios detected the presence of the drives!

[gibboap]

right just reseated the RAM and the CPU checked all was fine I now have vga signal, and the blinking uderscore is back aggggggggggggh (with the new fan i am getting a temp of 39 tis all cool and the gang there butttt gets no where)

 

just to refresh, the comp passes post, before the screen which says boot to cd press any key it comes up with a blinking underscore! and gets no further!

 

in bios i can see all hdd cd dvd cpu fdd etc

 

any one any ideas or has ever had the underscore off death! please help i really appreciate every ones fast respones, the pc is a freiends who needs it for business as her was BER and she is loosing money and patience

[gibboap]

have you tried another Hardisk, one that has an os already installed even if it bsod's. I had a simular fault many years ago when a hard drive was set to master and a cdrom was set to cable select but it was located at the master connector. The system worked fine for over a year and suddenly just stopped booting because of this, furthermore the bios detected the presence of the drives!

 

i did try her old hdd am tempted to try a hdd to my ubuntu station (but that means moving lol)

 

the hdd in the failing comp is sata with two ide optical drives to my knolege this should have none of the problems above nbut i may be worng

 

right lets start a swap fest!

[Guest AustenLowe]

you could try and disconnect all the drives and boot from a usb stick if you have one thats boot able (and the bios supports, highly likely in this day and age)

 

Right time for some assassins creed.. good luck

[gibboap]

right more confusion..... i have just put an old 60gb WD IDE drive in (no optical connected) this drive has ubuntu installed .... right .... booted 1st time....

 

so i connected a cd drive up blinkin underscore!!!!!!! agggrrrrhhhhhhhh

[Guest AustenLowe]

if its on cable select force it to slave and the hard disk to master

[Guest AustenLowe]

sounds like the cd drive is the fault for the underscore problem, have you tried original drive without the cd drive. if that works i would try another cd drive if you have one lying around which being a techy is usually the case.

[gibboap]

a min a go it booted into win install then bsod on pci.sys which after reading means (that cus i grabbed the 1st xp disk arround, an orignal) it didnt have the pci-express drivers on so went and grabbed an xp2 disk and again _ flashing bloody underscore.

 

i have tried 3 drives so far gonna try one more........................errrrrrrrrrrrrrr......ide cable am gonna swap that too

 

i am not gonna be beaten!!!!!

[PeterW]

what was the stop error number on the BSOD? Which Sata port do you have the HDD on? Which BIOS version is do you have on it v1.30 can be problematic try upgrading to v1.60 (or v1.7B4 if your feeling brave).

[FN-GM]

It could possibly be a faulty motherboard.

 

Z

[gibboap]

sussed it sorted

 

if you want to know how read on

 

short answer = cd drive

 

long answer = the freiend who wanted the pc wanted to spend £500 ish so i thought how can i lower the price... "i have a case and disk drives" i said there is £100+/- so i ordered the internal sh*t and build it and that is where the blinking underscores happened.... i came to reolise that the underscores are when it is checking the boot device, i have been swapping every thing, ram cpu hdds (it did boot with my ubuntu hdd [given it didnt have the gfx drivers but meh]) gfx card etc etc so what was left i know the system ran, as it ran linux (time for a full stop). at this point i had tried 3 xp disks 4 optical drives (cd reader, dvd reader, cdrw and another cdreader) and the rest hw swaps........tried a vista disk ... error insert bootable media then enter [sic] (it was in a cd reader not a dvd drive) so on a whim and the back thought of somthing in another forum i had read i grabbed my dvdrw out of my station and bob ya uncle etc

 

answer= it was the old optical drives on this mobo...it did not like booting to them.

 

so now vista is installed just been for a pint (or two) gonna install the rest tomoz

 

thanks you all very much for you speedy resonses it was great!!!! this was the best forum i posted on and the 1st / 2nd big post i have done am defo an edugeek fan now!!! (thank god i had them pints cud not type this much at this time of night with out it lol)

 

cheers again

[FN-GM]

@ gibboap I am glad to hear it’s all fixed. Now that your problem is fixed don't leave to forum stick around!

 

Z

[gibboap]

yeah will defo be sticking arround, although will be hard to kick my 'lurker' habbit (most of which is the laziness of sitting up to the key board lol)

 

see you arround!