ASRock 470 new build. I can't get to boot menu

[ronstaridaho]

Very carefully assembled this PC. Used ASRock 470 mother board and all quality components.
Very carefully checked all connections, etc
I have built computers before.

Turn on system. No video. Reset system, ASRock logo comes up with list of F2, F6, F12 etc
None of them do anything. Original keyboard was PS/2 IBM model M. Changed keyboard to Cherry USB brand new one. Keyboard works fine on my laptop.

Still nothing. Keyboard Num Lock lights up, but can't turn on shift lock light. Or turn off Num lock
Mouse not working. Of course. No OS installed.

CAN NOT GET TO BOOT MENU!

So I am sitting here with a $1200 paperweight.
Any ideas?. I sent ASRock a request for support, but don't know when they will respond.

 

[jojesa]

Could you list your system components.

 

[ronstaridaho]

ASRock x470 Master SLI/ac, Ryzen5 2600, MSI Aero ITX 1050Ti, Corsair vengance DDR4 16 gb, Kingston M2 SUV500M8/240G, Samsung 860 EVO 500 GB. Mouse, tried two keyboards, one IBM PS/2, one new Cherry USB.

 

[jojesa]

Make sure the 24-pin, 8-pin or 4-pin ATX power cables are seated properly
Try with one disk and one RAM module.

 

[Doctor Rob]

Try with 1 stick of ram.. it also may matter what power supply you have and what is the model of the ram, did you put it in the recomended slots?.. do you have 1,2, or 4 sticks of the ddr4 ram? etc..

and on the motherboard you say the thing shows letters and numbers? what one does it stay on and not go to another one.. that SHOULD tell you if you have issues with the ram, cpu, or video card.. etc.. (I have the little better X470 board from them and its great)

 

[ronstaridaho]

New development. When I disconnect the WD 2 terrabyte hard drive power cable, the system works. What should I try next?
In addition to the parts listed above, I also have a 2Tb SATA hard drive. I tried moving the data cable to different connectors on the MB (there are 6) but didn't help. Disconnected the data cable from the WD hard drive (the small connector). Would go to boot fine. Then I tried a different hard drive. This worked. So it seems a bad 2TB hard drive was disrupting the system.

 

[ronstaridaho]

I am pretty sure the 2TB drive is bad. Will test it in another system, for which I have a swappable external HD SATA holder.
I suppose now, I have to be sure it sees my flash drive with windows on it. What is the abbreviation UEFI mean on the boot menu, (which I finally can SEE). It says next to those letters, "Built in EFI Shell". What is that? When I plug in my windows flash drive, will it show up as a bootable device, as I hope?

 

[ronstaridaho]

Actually, it was when i unplugged the DATA cable for the WD hard drive that the system worked. Power connector didn't matter, and I am now running and seeing a 750 Seagate hard drive using those same connectors. Still, the WD hard drive was unused, and I expected it to work. Do you suppose there was some kind of limit to size of hard drive since I already have 750 GB in SSDs? (a M2 of 240 and a SSD of 500)?

 

[jojesa]

Actually, it was when i unplugged the DATA cable for the WD hard drive that the system worked. Power connector didn't matter, and I am now running and seeing a 750 Seagate hard drive using those same connectors. Still, the WD hard drive was unused, and I expected it to work. Do you suppose there was some kind of limit to size of hard drive since I already have 750 GB in SSDs? (a M2 of 240 and a SSD of 500)?

It could be that you are using a M.2 SATA and it is sharing a SATA port on your motherboard.
Does the manual says anything about it?

You should connect one disk and install Windows.
After Windows is installed and working then you can connect as many disk as ports on the motherboard.
The size of the disk should not be an issue since I have a 4TB disk on my ASRock motherboard.
I have 4 disk and a M.2 drive so that's not the issue.

 

[ronstaridaho]

Actually, it was when i unplugged the DATA cable for the WD hard drive that the system worked. Power connector didn't matter, and I am now running and seeing a 750 Seagate hard drive using those same connectors. Still, the WD hard drive was unused, and I expected it to work. Do you suppose there was some kind of limit to size of hard drive since I already have 750 GB in SSDs? (a M2 of 240 and a SSD of 500)?

It could be that you are using a M.2 SATA and it is sharing a SATA port on your motherboard.
Does the manual says anything about it?

You should connect one disk and install Windows.
After Windows is installed and working then you can connect as many disk as ports on the motherboard.
The size of the disk should not be an issue since I have a 4TB disk on my ASRock motherboard.
I have 4 disk and a M.2 drive so that's not the issue.

 

[ronstaridaho]

Thank you. As is customary, by disconnecting peripherals one at a time, I finally found the one that was causing the problem. Further testing showed it to be not the SATA connector, not the power connector, not the SATA drive port number, not the cables, but the Western Digital 2Tb drive itself. I took it out and substituted a 750 Tb drive (almost full of photos), and it all worked fine.
Now, I am installing Windows 10 onto the M2 drive. I checked the bad drive on another system, and it is not recognized. Doesn't come up in Disk Management at all.
So. Thank you for your help and advice. I am now going to order another 2Tb drive from Newegg, and swap it in later.
Thanks so much.
Ron

 

[jojesa]

That's great that you were able to sort it out.
For storage, I usually go with either WD blue or red disks...have not had one died yet.