I am stuck....after 2 days.....

[wowguy]

This is my first build and I am stuck at the "test hard drive" part of the instructions.

This is what I put together:

Cooler Master 690 case (I picked this because of all the fans)
Cooler Master Real Power Pro 650W PSU (Picked this, because I run a LOT of USB devices (keyboard, mouse, gamepad, headset))
Gigabyte GA-X48-DS4 MoBo
3 GB Crucial Ballistix 1024MB PC2-8500 DDR2 (Gonna run XP 32-bit because I have the disks, so am extra GB of RAM is mute)
Intel Core 2 Duo E7200 LGA775 CPU
Zalman CNPS9700LED (this thing is like a Hemi, and it glows Blue!)
EVGA GeForce GTX 260 Core 216 896MB DDR3 Video Card
Western Digital Caviar SE16 640GB 7200rpm SATA 300 MB/s HDD
Sony NEC Optiarc 20x IDE DVD RW/CDRW (Black)
SABRENT CRW-UINB 68-in-1 USB 2.0 Internal Card Reader w/ USB 2.0 Port (this is mounted but not hooked up to my MoBo yet, reviews suggested waiting until after Windows install to hook this up)

I did not install a floppy drive. My first boot went flawlessly. After connecting my HDD and my DVD/CD drive, I do the second boot, get into BIOS without a hitch. In trying to translate the online install instructions to what I am seeing in the Gigabyte BIOS (which is VERY different) it appears that a lot of the BIOS adjusting was completed automatically, that is to say my HDD and DVD/CD drive were instantly recognized, and all the other IDE masters were set to "None". There were a couple of changes I made, based on the MoBo guide book for settings to change if you were going to use XP, which I am.

I downloaded the CD version of the Western Digital Hard Drive Diagnostic tools, set my first boot disk to the DVD/CD drive and rebooted. Things work well until I get to a screen with a black background, with a table listing what looks to be my USB connections, firewire, and what not, and at the bottom (trying to recall from memory) is the Boot from DVD/CD drive prompt, it pops up on the screen, the cursor pops to the next line (as if you hit the "enter" key) and then......nothing.

The only thing that leads me to believe I do not have a faulty DVD/CD drive (and I could be very mistaken) is that when I put the "Office XP 2003" disk in I get the "put system disk in DVD/CD drive and hit enter" prompt (oddly enough, no matter how many times you try it, the "Office XP 2003" disk is not the "Windows XP" disk, I was tired at this point).

Another thing (as if this wall of text was not enough) The MoBo did not come with a disk with SATA drivers on it. I downloaded and burnt this to a CD, but my understanding is that Windows XP will have the drivers (SP2 or later), so I am trying to not get stuck here as well.

Does anyone have any thoughts? As I understand it, once I boot with the Western Digital HDD diagnostic disk in the DVD/CD drive, and that drive is the first boot drive, the diagnostic program should just take over.

Otherwise, the instructions on the website, and product suggestions are AWESOME, and I really cannot wait to get this rig running (upgrading from a Dell Inspiron 9300 laptop, Pentium 3 1.8GHz 2 GB slug RAM NVIDIA 68xx (I think) Video Card).

[chunkylover53]

You should wait for a second opinion, but here are my thoughts.

1) I would try to load XP now. I know it's not what Rob recommends, and you will lose some time if you load the OS now only to find out when you do the HDD diagnostic later that the hard drive is bad, but that's what I would do.

2) Once you get the OS installed, you can update all of the drivers from within windows. I find that the most critical driver to update first is Ethernet, so you can start getting windows updates and download fresh drivers right from mfr websites.

3) As far as the BIOS changes you made, while you will need to make changes at some point, you can in fact go back and reset it to the default settings and only change boot disk order. Again, not what Rob recos, but default or fail safe settings can usually get the job done.

4) You confused me with the Office 2003 comments. You do have a retail or OEM copy of Windows XP, right? Just want to make sure your not trying to use the old Dell disks.

[wowguy]

Thanks, I think I may give just installing windows XP a shot, despite the pitfalls of possibly having a broken HDD.

The "Microsoft Office" comment was making fun of myself for repeatedly trying to use the Office XP disks (which of course do not have the OS on them), because I did not grab the Windows XP disks! LOL

It was VERY late at night and I was tired, so I repeatedly was using the wrong disks to install the Windows XP OS (I do have retail copies of both sets of disks).

Thanks again for the suggestion.