What could the problem be?

[alazeer]

I have an Old Falcon PC that the HDD was going in it(at least I think it was the HDD? Thing would churn and chomp and reboot all the time).

I had a 250GB IDE HDD that i wanted to use to replace the raid 0 setup that was in it. At first what I did was run Easeus Disk Copy and clone disk 0 of the raid on to the 250GB HDD. Then I took out both of the HDD's that were in the raid, and then I took out the promise raid controller and installed the HDD and started it up. To say the least it wouldn't boot up all i got was some sort of error.

So now I'm to the point where I just want to get the damn thing to boot from an XP Cd so i can install the OS and start fresh, when I do that it gives me all kinds of "can't Install file" or can't find file error, something like that?

The PC is based on an Old Asus A7N8X, with an Athlon 2800CPU.
It has an old Toshiba CD and a Plextor CD burner, Both of them and the HDD are IDE. Am i supposed to Daisy Chain the CD Rom and the Burner together on IDE Channel 1 and the HDD on Channel 2 or is it the other way around?

Right now the thing is sitting there not working at all and my kids are yelling at me to get it fixed, lol.

Any and ALL help will be greatly appreciated!

 

[jsc]

It has an old Toshiba CD and a Plextor CD burner, Both of them and the HDD are IDE. Am i supposed to Daisy Chain the CD Rom and the Burner together on IDE Channel 1 and the HDD on Channel 2 or is it the other way around?

It doesn't make any real difference, but I always put the boot HDD on the first IDE channel as the Master device.

For the rest of your problem, work through our standard checklist and troubleshooting thread:
http://www.tomshardware.com/forum/261145-31-read-posting-boot-problems
I mean work through, not just read over it. We spent a lot of time on this. It should find most of the problems.

If not, continue.

I have tested the following beep patterns on Gigabyte, eVGA, and ECS motherboards. Other BIOS' may be different.

Breadboard - that will help isolate any kind of case problem you might have.
http://www.tomshardware.com/forum/262730-31-breadboarding

Breadboard with just motherboard, CPU & HSF, case speaker, and PSU.

Make sure you plug the CPU power cable in. The system will not boot without it.

I always breadboard a new build. It takes only a few minutes, and you know you are putting good parts in the case.

You can turn on the PC by momentarily shorting the two pins that the case power switch goes to. You should hear a series of long, single beeps indicating memory problems. Silence indicates a problem with (in most likely order) the PSU, motherboard, or CPU. Remember, at this time, you do not have a graphics card installed so the load on your PSU will be reduced.

If no beeps:
Running fans and drives and motherboard LED's do not necessarily indicate a good PSU. In the absence of a single short beep, they also do not indicate that the system is booting.

At this point, you can sort of check the PSU. Try to borrow a known good PSU of around 550 - 600 watts. That will power just about any system with a single GPU. If you cannot do that, use a DMM to measure the voltages. Measure between the colored wires and either chassis ground or the black wires. Yellow wires should be 12 volts. Red wires: +5 volts, orange wires: +3.3 volts, blue wire : -12 volts, violet wire: 5 volts always on. Tolerances are +/- 5% except for the -12 volts which is +/- 10%.

The gray wire is really important. It should go from 0 to +5 volts when you turn the PSU on with the case switch. CPU needs this signal to boot.

You can turn on the PSU by completely disconnecting the PSU and using a paperclip or jumper wire to short the green wire to one of the neighboring black wires.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5FWXgQSokF4&feature=youtube_gdata

This checks the PSU under no load conditions, so it is not completely reliable. But if it can not pass this, it is dead. Then repeat the checks with the PSU plugged into the computer to put a load on the PSU.

If the system beeps:
If it looks like the PSU is good, install a memory stick. Boot. Beep pattern should change to one long and several short beeps indicating a missing graphics card.

Silence or long single beeps indicate a problem with the memory.

Insert the video card and connect any necessary PCIe power connectors. Boot. At this point, the system should POST successfully (a single short beep). Notice that you do not need keyboard, mouse, monitor, or drives to successfully POST.

Now start connecting the rest of the devices starting with the monitor, then keyboard and mouse, then the rest of the devices, testing after each step. It's possible that you can pass the POST with a defective video card. The POST routines can only check the video interface. It cannot check the internal parts of the video card.