My first system! Any final thoughts?

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Ok, I am starting to feel like I may be seeing the light at the end of the tunnel. The manual says that IDE 1,3,and 4 are bootable and that 1 and 3 are primary leaving 2 and 4 as secondary. Given this, I would put the New HD and the CD ROM on IDE 1 and the DVD burner on IDE 4? Im assuming that would be correct, both of these connectors are bootable.
 
The BLUE is primary and the WHITE is secondary, I'd disable in BIOS the chip that controlls the other 2 simply because you don't need the extra interface right now.

<font color=blue>Only a place as big as the internet could be home to a hero as big as Crashman!</font color=blue>
<font color=red>Only a place as big as the internet could be home to an ego as large as Crashman's!</font color=red>
 
Look <A HREF="http://www.newegg.com/app/ViewProductDesc.asp?description=37-116-192&depa=6" target="_new">here.</A>

Abit IS7 - 3.0C @ 3.6ghz - Mushkin PC4000 (2 X 512) - Sapphire 9800Pro - TT 420 watt Pure Power
Samsung 120gb ATA-100 - Maxtor 40gb ATA - 100
Sony DRU-510A - Yellowtail Merlot
 
Blue and White? Are you talking about the connectors on the MOBO? If so mine are Yellow IDE 3and4, and White IDE 1 and 2. I understood the part about disabling the chip, but I what I dont understand is if the chip that I am disabling controls 2 predetermined connectors. Im about to give it a shot. I will report back in later.
 
Yours are both white? LMAO, no WONDER you got such a great deal! Mine are the proper colors, IDE1 is Blue and IDE2 is white! You got a defect!

The chip you'd be disabling turns off IDE 3 and 4 as well as SATA 3 and 4.

<font color=blue>Only a place as big as the internet could be home to a hero as big as Crashman!</font color=blue>
<font color=red>Only a place as big as the internet could be home to an ego as large as Crashman's!</font color=red>
 
I wish I could blame this one on the fact that I can't find my firggin glasses. BTW I don't have a clue where they are. IDE 1 and 2 are Blue and White. The other thing that I am not so proud of is that if I would have read one more page, I wouldnt have wasted your time with the last question. It just slapped me in the face. BREAKING NEW"S "The machine is officially loading XP as we speak!"

Sorry for the FU, and thanks for your help. You do realize that I still have plenty of things that I can screw up before I can declare this rig fully operational!
 
You do realize that I still have plenty of things that I can screw up before I can declare this rig fully operational!
Click to expand...
Hey, there's plenty of things you can screw up <i>after</i> you declare the rig 'fully operational'... This is painful personal experience speaking here.. 😱

---
"Sex without love is an empty experience...
But as empty experiences go, it's one of the best" - Woody Allen
 
Man I have had it with this thing. I thought everything was going fine. Xp started to load, but I thought it was strange that I never was promted for the product code. Well, it will get to the Opening XP screen and hang up.
 
Does it just sit there at the loading screen, or does it turn off/reboot or something?

If it seems to have frozen, re you sure there's no hard disk activity or anything? How long have you left it for?

---
"Sex without love is an empty experience...
But as empty experiences go, it's one of the best" - Woody Allen
 
Im not sure what the loading screen is. It hangs up at the screen that is Black in the background with the XP logo and the little bar under the logo will strobe about two times then hang up. If this is the loading screen then yes. The first time I left it for a 30 mins. I have left it a few times, but it doesnt go any farther than that.
 
When you've had it on for a little while, go into the BIOS and see what the CPU & motherboard temperatures are - I guess it <i>could</i> be heat related, but to never even get into windows suggests something else...

Bad memory maybe? You'd have to be pretty unlucky to get bad RAM out-of-the-box, but you could try running Memtest86 anyway (<A HREF="http://www.memtest86.com/memt31a.zip" target="_new">here</A>). Run the installer on another PC (The one you're posting from?). It'll want a formatted floppy disk, so have one spare. It'll give a boot disk that will test your memory for errors, so you won't need to get as far as windows, just make sure the BIOS is set to boot from floppy before the HDD. Leave it running for a few hours, and see if it gets any errors.

You could also try unplugging everything apart from CPU, GFX, 1 stick of memory and the hard disk, just to see if it gets anywhere..

---
"Sex without love is an empty experience...
But as empty experiences go, it's one of the best" - Woody Allen
 
I dont have anything in the system other that the HD, the CD, ATI 9600XT All-in-Wonder, of the RAM. About the RAM, I was wondering if I had Ram that was to fast or not compatible, but I have checked the Corsair website and it list the RAM that I have. Its XMS DDR 4000. I never have gotten to the screen in the XP install that asks me for the product code. I dont know what to do. I dont have another video card, so I cant try seeing if the video card is the problem. This may be a bad idea, but what do you think about me reformatng the HD and installiing WIN 2K Pro. I have that disk. If it worked I guess I could then upgrade to XP. Is that a bad idea?
 
Here is the other info.
CPU temp - 47 DEGREES C Stays within 2 Degrees + or -
CHA temp - 32 DEGREES C " " " " " "" " " " " " "" " "
CPU V CORE 1.32V
DRAM V 2.56V
AGP V 1.50V
 
Your temps seem fine enough there.....

I can only suggest try running Memtest, and if that finds no errors, then you could try installing your W2K CD. if that works fine, there must be something wrong with your copy of XP I guess.

---
"Sex without love is an empty experience...
But as empty experiences go, it's one of the best" - Woody Allen
 
You could also try nudging the DRAM voltage up a bit to around 2.65-2.7v. That might help. Some RAM just doesn't like low voltages.

<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>
 
I went with the Corsair XMS PC 4000, so it is at the edge of the compatibilty list for this board. I had been wondering about the memory causing the system to hang. I will giver it a shot and see. Thanks.
 
I could be wrong, but I seem to recall that Corsair's RAM waranty lets you volt up to 2.8V. (At least I'm pretty sure that was the limit for my XMS3200C2 sticks.) I'd double-check this before I go up that high, but don't limit yourself if you don't have to. :)

<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>
 
The voltage change did not help. Thanks anyway. The only other thing that I may not have mentioned, is that when it gets to the screen with the XP logo, the light that strobes across the box under the logo doesnt even make it across all the way before it hangs. I took the CD ROM out, and it made it all the way across once and almost across again before hanging up. This was only about one second longer before it hung up. This may have not had anything to do with removing the CD ROM. I just don't know!
 
ANOTHER UPDATE!

Hey guy's guess what! I reformatted the Hard Drive and Installed WIN 2K. It not only installed, but it boots up. Could this mean that the XP disk was bad? Also, do I load drivers now and then try to upgrade to XP? I dont want to screw this up, it took long enough to get this far!
 
To anyone who doesnt know this,"You CANT upgrade from WIN 2K PRO to WIN XP home edition" If you have Win 2K Pro you can however upgrade to Win XP Pro. This has been the problem with my system the whole time. If you already have Win 2K Pro installed, you find out real quick that this is not a qualified upgrade. A screen will simply pop up and tell you this. On the other hand, if you are starting out with a new system that has a clean harddrive you can install Win XP home edition. It will even verify the WIN 2K Pro cd and continue with the install. Problem is that it causes the system to hang up at the first XP logo screen. The Butt Munch that sold me the upgrade told me that it was a qualified upgrade from Win 2K Pro. I only have myself to blame. If I would have read the box, it doesnt list 2K Pro as one of the upgradeable platforms.

Thanks to everyone that contributed to this post. I know that some of you put a significant amount of time and effort into helping me. As of now, I am running Win 2K Pro and everything is looking good. Thanks again!
 
Now you have a functioning OS, I would definitely suggest stress-testing the hell out of it.

Run things like Sisoft Sandra's 'Burn-in' test (no real need to do anything other than the CPU tests + memory test), Prime95's 'Torture test', and 3dMark on a loop.

My standard stress-test is to run Sandra's burn-in (CPU + Mem) a few hundred times, while simultaneously looping through 3dmark + Playing MP3s with winamp (at least then it's providing some entertainment - plus if the music stops, you know it's crashed so you don't need to keep watching...)

If it's still happy after a few hours then there's either something wrong with your XP install disk, or there's something even weirder going on...

Another thought: I <i>have</i> actually seen a number of people say that W2K with service pack 4 is in fact the best OS microsoft currently has available, so you could maybe stick with it, if you can't get XP running.

---
"Sex without love is an empty experience...
But as empty experiences go, it's one of the best" - Woody Allen
 
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