Ran into a few first boot problems (maybe)

[Dr Cuervo]

CASE:http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16811129024

MB:http://www.newegg.com/Product/ComboD...t=Combo.205144

CPU:http://www.newegg.com/Product/ComboD...t=Combo.205144

GPU:http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16814130434

HD:http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16822136074

RAM:http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16820231122

Ok, so I took out the psu, found no more cables and figured that the fan must be powered through either the 8-pin or 24-pin cables. Seems that I was right as all of my fans were spinning, although it takes about 1-2 seconds for the cpu one to start(is this bad?).

The First screen loaded up showing a whole bunch of numbers and devices and with an error saying boot failed, insert boot disk.

The only things I currently have connected are the cpu, gpu, and case plugs for the speaker, power, etc.

On another note, there is only a blue LED showing solid on the front of the case, the universal power symbol in the middle of the power button does not light up.

[Dr Cuervo]

OK, so I've made it to the BIOS screen, the power LED is still not working right but I have a few questions about my bios setup.

I'm currently using the E8400 Core 2 Duo CPU which is rated at 3.0 GHz. However, my BIOS is registering it at 2.83 GHz (333x8.5)


SCARY NOTE: After about 30 minutes of looking around the BIOS/Updating things I went to the PC Health screen. There it read that my CPU was at 90 C. This freaked me out and I immediately shut down the computer. There is no way this is a correct reading right? Wouldn't my computer have shut itself down at those temps? Every fan was running inside of the Antec Sonata III case so I feel that there is no way that reading could have been right.

A little while later I once again started up the computer and went to the PC Health menu, this time it read my cpu temp at 37 C which seems much more normal. I monitered it for about half and hr and it never rose above 40 C. I don't seem to have any problems as of yet because of the hardware.

However, I am having quite a bit of trouble installing Windows 7 RC 64 bit. It would not recognize my SATA HD or the drivers for them. I'm going to make a DVD that containes the 32-bit version of RC and see if that makes any difference. If it does I'll probably just go ahead and purchase the 64-bit of vista.

[The Wise Monkey]

Yeah, that temp does seem a bit worrying. Did you put thermal paste between the CPU and the heatsink? Is it all clamped down correctly?

When you say that Windows 7 doesn't recognise you HD, does it show in the BIOS? You shouldn't need to install any additional drivers if you are not using RAID.

Finally, about the power light, the most obvious potential cause is that you've got the + and - leads the wrong way around on the motherboard. I've been building PCs for years, and I still get this wrong.... XD

[Dr Cuervo]

Yeah, both the HD and the DVD drive show up in the BIOS which is annoying to me. I didn't put the paste on because it was preapplied but all seems fine with the cpu temp now. I havn't seen any temps above 40 C. Also, I have the power LED figured out, it was actually me just being an idiot. I assumed that the LED was on the power button itself but its actually located below it.

If I change my bios settings to AHCI then my BIOS won't recognize either drive. Any help here would be appreciated.

[The Wise Monkey]

Ah, OK, those temps are fine now. Just keep an eye on it. :)

So what exactly happens when you try to install Windows? You boot from the DVD, choose the language from the welcome screen... then what?

[Dr Cuervo]

Then I get to the point where I am supposed to choose and partition my HD, but there is nothing there. I then try to install the drivers from my boot disk and none of them are compatible. I tried to rectify this by dling the new drivers from gigabytes website and putting them on a dvd and I had the same problems.

Unfortunately I don't have a floppy drive so I don't think I can install them that way either.

If I go into BIOS and change the settings to ACHI then the optical drive and hd don't show up at all in the bios so I left them in IDE mode where they are seen by bios.

[The Wise Monkey]

Try using a live CD such as GParted to format the hard drive to NTFS:

http://gparted.sourceforge.net/download.php

[Dr Cuervo]

Thanks a bunch man, that solved the problem. I ran Gparted and just made one huge partition in ntfs and windows was able to recognize it. It is currently installing and all seems well.

On another note, if my cpu in fact did overheat and has some heat damage what kind of symptoms can I expect? I don't think there is a problem, I think it was a bad reading, but I just want to be sure.

Thanks again

[Dr Cuervo]

Well, everything is working correctly now. Just finished installing all of the drivers and such. Now I'm going to load up this free copy of World at War that they sent me and see how this baby runs.

Thanks a bunch Wise Monkey, you saved me with that Gparted software.

[The Wise Monkey]

No problem - glad I could help. :)