Computer Wont Boot HELP!

[CADtech]

Ok well i recieved a new heatsink and fan , some round cables for my hard drives and dvd-rw and dvd rom last night. followed the arctic silvers clean up and installation, installed everything, then when i plugged everything back in it started running but nothing but a black screen came up.. almost like it was about to go through memory testing and do the whole startup thing but no... nothing happened. i didnt have time to mess with it and i was hoping maybe someone had the same problem before and could share what their problem was.

Thanks for any help.


I just thought of some other things that happened that seemed odd. such as my mouse and keyboard not lighting up...both USB. I was very careful not to bump anything on the mother board so i hope its not that.
<P ID="edit"><FONT SIZE=-1><EM>Edited by CADtech on 01/25/05 08:51 AM.</EM></FONT></P>

 

[pat]

If you unplug the dvds device, does it boot?

Mayby you got some unkeyed IDE cable and one is plugged backward. Maybe on is defective too..

So, before replying that they are plugged right or they should be good because they are brand new, unplug them and try. Then come back

-Always put the blame on you first, then on the hardware !!!

 

[CADtech]

Ha ha you must of replyed to plenty of these types of threads.. well just for referance these are the things i bought and installed.
IDE cables...http://www.newegg.com/app/ViewProductDesc.asp?description=12-183-033&depa=0

HSF Combo..http://www.newegg.com/app/ViewProductDesc.asp?description=35-151-111&depa=0

floppy cable.http://www.newegg.com/app/ViewProductDesc.asp?description=12-181-025&depa=0

I will try what you suggest when i get home.. at work right now...one question though.
So your saying that a computer will absolutely not go through any boot up if a device isnt connected right... i thought it would at least go through memory testing... but i guess we will see. thanks for the reply..

also the floppy light stays on like its reading something but nothing is in it.

 

[pat]

Ah Ha!..the floppy light stay on..the floppy is plugged backward!! that's it!



-Always put the blame on you first, then on the hardware !!!

 

[CADtech]

haha.. well then i hope thats all .. thing is that was the first thing i was gonna try... thats so odd that a floppy drive would prevent the system form showing anything at startup.

 

[slvr_phoenix]

It's actually amazing how often floppy drives come with the plug flipped so that you have to put the cable in the wrong way to get it 'right'. Two wrongs sometimes do make a right. :\ You'd think someone would have made sure that was standardized by now.

Of course your floppy drive could be right and you just accidentally put the cable in the wrong way. There's always that.

But still, on occasion I see a floppy drive that's got it all bass ackwards. So when assembling systems it's one of the first things on my mind to go wrong on the first bootup. That and smoke. Luckily the smoke has never happened yet at least.

<pre><b><font color=red>"Build a man a fire and he's warm for the rest of the evening.
Set a man on fire and he's warm for the rest of his life." - Steve Taylor</font color=red></b></pre><p>

 

[CADtech]

yes no smoke.. that would be bad.. yea floppys are dumb.. DICONTINUE!!! thing was when i tried to put it int the "right" way it didnt seem to fit... we shall see

 

[slvr_phoenix]

I personally don't plan on ditching floppies any time soon. Had I not built my latest system with one then I'd have been troubled. Windows install would only accept drivers from a floppy and I needed RAID drivers during install so that Windows would see my array and install to it. Plus I carry a lot of files on floppy still. Did you know that in rich text format and using ZIP compression you can fit more than seven full novels on a single floppy?

<pre><b><font color=red>"Build a man a fire and he's warm for the rest of the evening.
Set a man on fire and he's warm for the rest of his life." - Steve Taylor</font color=red></b></pre><p>

 

[pat]

then maybe it is keyed at one end but not at the other. there should be a mark on the connectors to indicate pin one, as a little triangle. pin 1 on the motherboard to pin one on the floppy. Floppy often has a small triangle too. may be it is connected right at the floppy side, but inverted in the mobo side...

-Always put the blame on you first, then on the hardware !!!

 

[CADtech]

ok first ill say you where right about the floppy, there was a piece of circuit board on my floppy drive that is made to be snapped off to accomidate a keyed cable. so thats fixed.. but the problem didnt stop.. After unplugging my floppy it was starting up like normal and when it got to the screen where it says windows XP and has the little scroll bar it froze... for a long time it never unfroze so i turned it off and turned it back on it started with the boot screen testing the memory, hit DEL to goto setup all that good stuff, but right when it started it beeped and the screen kinda flashed and the letters looked a little duller then it did when it initially started, then it goes black like its about to display the windows XP with the status bar.. but no nothing at all.... so i go into the bios and reset all the perimeters to defaults... even though they probably where already at default, now my screen wont even light up when i turn on the computer it stays in its sleep mode... so i guess i have to clear the cmos.... bah

 

[pat]

Yes, clear the cmos, then, I would try to unplug the floppy to see if it will boot normally. Something may have burnt when you pluged the floppy cable backward. Happened to me one time. If that dont cure the problem, try to boot in safe mode to see if you can boot. Boot time may be longer so give him enough time to boot.

-Always put the blame on you first, then on the hardware !!!

 

[CADtech]

i tried to boot into safe mode one time and it scrolled like 5 windows system files and never booted into safemode.. but i will try again when i get home... blah

 

[tweebel]

Sounds like RAM trouble..

 

[CADtech]

well im home and i cleared the CMOS went throught soft menu and reset my cpu speed. now im back where i started it gives a boot up at least, sees the ram and everything else then when its about to go start up windows instead of seeing a windows logo im staring at a blank screen. it makes one beep still.. right at the begining it will show my graphics card type atthe top then it will flash beep and the screen will be a little duller and it will go through the rest of the memory check there are no other errors on screen and it looks just like its going into windows but it doesnt... perhaps a dead hard drive?

 

[endyen]

More likely a crappy cable. Try putting your old ribbon cable back in.

 

[CADtech]

well i put the old ribbon cable back in for the hard disc, and i guess ill throw the othe rone back in

 

[CADtech]

Ok well i put the ribbonsback in and it still makes teh gahgahgunkcclick beep noise but it actually started to start windows this time... only prblem is it froze still have a black screen but it made it past the windows XP with the status bar and its o the point where my desktop was about to come on i can even see my cursor... but lik ei said it is now frozen once again lets see where a restart brings me

ok well restart wasnt as successful as the one before it froze up before getting to the XP status bar screen.. sigh<P ID="edit"><FONT SIZE=-1><EM>Edited by cadtech on 01/26/05 08:35 PM.</EM></FONT></P>

 

[CADtech]

Ok well now after a couple of days taking everything apart reapplying thermal compund and heatsink inserting all my old ribbons except my floppy i left the new one in there im finally on my computer and its up and running... i wonder if it had something to do with the kind of cables i have.. my hard drive cable seemed to have more threads i guess you could call them or more little wires then the other ribbon going to my dvd rw and dvd rom... i dunno guess ill leave it as is until i venture out and get a heatsink fo rmy chipset so i dont have to have that annoying little fan on it

 

[tweebel]

The harddrive cable is a UDMA 66-133 cable, the optical drives cables is udma 33 and below.
If I were you I'd scandisk the harddrive if you hear click sounds at bootup.

 

[CADtech]

it went through the scan disk, but i walked away so i dunno what the results were. Although i have had the feeling that my hard drive has been dying for some time. maybe ill just use eraser and completely wipe it out and plug it into an external casing and get a new hard drive.

 

[pat]

The ribbon with the smaller wire are ATA100-133 80 wires ribbon. The one with bigger wires is ATA33-66 40 wires.

That meand that ATA100 or 133 HDD wont work properly with ATA33-66 ribbon. The extra wire act as shield between the line because, in electronic, a hi-frequency signal is likely to affect the line beside if it is too close. By moving data at faster speed, ATA 100-133 controller need the extra wire to prevent that, otherwise, the lines in ATA33-66 ribbon will become all "1" during transfer, causing data corruption, and crash.

-Always put the blame on you first, then on the hardware !!!

 

[CADtech]

well then that was part of the problem, ill remember that next time, thanks for the explination.