First Build, Power Up Help Needed......

[James Taylor]

I'm in the middle of building my first PC and have just powered up for the first time. All the fans spin, the LED on the front panel comes on and bios is beeping every few seconds in a constant manner.

however, i get no reaction from my monitor and the motherboard manual says that on power up i should press the delete key to enter bios. i don't seem to get any response from trying to enter bios using the delete key as the beeping continues. also again i have no reaction from the monitor.

some suggestions as what to do next would be much appreciated!!

oh. my m'board is an Asus a8v-e deluxe.....

 

[CreditSolutions]

When its beeping, its trying to tell you whats wrong. Look somewhere in your manual or online for power on self-test codes for your motherboard. I wish I could tell you what it meant, but I dont know.

 

[xteam02001]

try reseating the ram or changing the slot it is in. reseat the videocard too.

 

[James Taylor]

Right Thanks for the suggestions.....

i found on another post about plugging in some speakers to hear the error message, said system failed memory test. have moved memory into the dimm slots and it now boots to the enter bios screen...!!

i'm going to add a cr rom drive to the setup now. Can i just insert the xp disc i have and install straight away if i set bios to boot from cd? i'm using sata hard drive will i need to enable it in bios?

the build has no floppy disk at the moment but i'll add one if i need to get going.

 

[aspire]

After you have the optical drive installed and your computer enters the bios set it to boot from cd and install windows, or linux, or Lindows or whatever the hell your gonna run on it. Then once it is installed restart your computer, go into the bios and change it to boot from hard drive.

 

[HAVOC]

If you are installing Windows XP to a SATA hard drive you are going to need the MOBO drivers disk. On that disk will be the SATA/RAID Drivers that windows needs to install. You'll have to copy those drivers to a floppy disk. Then during XP install at the bottom of the screen you will see press F6 to load 3rd Party SATA/RAID drivers. You must be quick. Press F6 and the install will continue. Then it will ask you to insert the Floppy with the drivers. After those drivers are installed, eject the floppy and continue installing windows.

 

[James Taylor]

Thanks for the instructions. At work at the moment but will give it a go when i get home later.....Thanks again!!

 

[James Taylor]

Just to clarify, at what point of the install will i have to install the drivers for the SATA drive.

i've put the xp disk in and the machine boots from this as if its going to install windows. When the option to press f6 if third party drivers are required for RAID/SATA i get no responce. The install continues until it comes to the point of telling me that there are no mass storage devices present and gives me a couple of options, one of which is to add a mass storage device.

Can i install the SATA drivers at this point? or should the xp install process be interupted when the option to press f6 is displayed?

 

[HAVOC]

To be able to hit the F6 button, you must restart the Setup process, and watch the bottom of the screen after pressing Enter on the "Welcome to Setup" screen. There will be some moments of files being loaded, and then you should see a message appear which says "Press F6 if you need to install a 3rd party SCSI or RAID driver". This message will only stay on the screen for a couple of seconds, so press F6 as soon as you see it appear.

After this is done, you will see other messages appear, and it will act as though nothing is happening, but eventually a screen will appear which will allow you to install the drivers for the HBA or controller. The screen will look like the sample below:

After you press S, the driver install process will continue and the floppy diskettes will be needed. Further instructions will be furnished after the driver install process has ended.