New compy help!

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Sargeras
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New compy help!

Post by Sargeras »

I've been up all fucking night trying to figure out what's causing this problem. Once my computer finishes posting and detects everything, it just reboots itself, and if I don't load bios or let the safe mode countdown go, it just reboots over and over again.

1. The bios is updated.
2. The bios detects my IDE hard drive as Primary Master.
3. The IDE HD is set as first in the boot order.
4. I can't find my Windows XP CD (so I guess I'm fucked).
5. Selecting Safe Mode prompt just reboots.
6. The IDE cables are fastened and secure.
7. Only my floppy, CD-RW, HD, and gfx card are connected.
8. Booting from floppy, the command prompt can only see A:\

Old Mobo: Intel D815EEA2
New Mobo: Asus P4P800-E Deluxe
Processor: P4/3.2ghz

This is the closest thing I can think of for a fix, but if DOS can't detect the C:\ drive, I fail to see how it will work. Plus I need to find that damn CD.

Any help would be greatly appreciated.
Sargeras Gudluvin - R.I.P. old friend - January 9, 2005
Lynks
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Post by Lynks »

I had the same problem when I bought my new one. I reinstalled Windows and everything worked fine after that.
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Llaffer
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Post by Llaffer »

what version of DOS are you booting from the floppy, and how is the hard drive formatted?

If it's NTFS and boot off of a Win98 created boot-disk, it won't see it since Win98 only knows about FAT32.

Since you can boot from floppy properly, sounds like something in the boot sector in the hard drive is messed up.

From your boot disk, see if you can fdisk the drive (fdisk should be able to tell you have a hard drive is installed but not formatted as FAT32. You can then repartition it and reformat it so you can see C: from the boot disk.

Then at at point, you can re-install your OS of choice.

Unless you install that hard drive has a 2nd hard drive in an existing system, I don't think there is any way to save whatever data is on it.
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Tenuvil
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Post by Tenuvil »

remove and reseat your RAM, and check the timings in your BIOS.

spontaneous reboots on POST are in my experience bad RAM related.
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Winnow
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Post by Winnow »

Tenuvil wrote:remove and reseat your RAM, and check the timings in your BIOS.

spontaneous reboots on POST are in my experience bad RAM related.
What Tenuvil said. RAM is the major culprit. (take it out, swap slots and make sure they're seated) Make sure your CPU is being recognized correctly by your bios (timings).

If not, try resetting the bios on your MB and starting fresh.
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Sargeras
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Post by Sargeras »

All fixed!

Thanks for the suggestions everyone. Brittney hooked me up with another XP CD (this one has SP2 on it though, so I had to dig up a CD key somewhere). Reinstalled and everything is great. I have to reinstall most of my programs, but I have those CD's so it's alright.

I logged into WoW last night for some PVP.... AND NO LAG!!!!!
Sargeras Gudluvin - R.I.P. old friend - January 9, 2005
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Trias
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Post by Trias »

i have a system running on that asus board and i find it to be awesome!
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