PiRho
13th of August 2008 (Wed), 16:00
OK, so first my new system, then my tale of woe. then my thoughts/Questions.
(The short version is that this system is giving me issues, will not POST/BIOS didn't see SATA HD's)
My New System:
Motherboard: Asus M3A32-MVP Deluxe
Processor: AMD Phenom 9850 BE
Video Card: Asus EAH3870/G/HTDI/512M Radeon
Ram: 4GB of Mushkin XP (2 x 2GB)
Hard Drives: 2* Seagate Barracuda 7200.11 500GB hard drives
Power Supply: Thermaltake W0116RU 750Watt
OS: Vista 64
Keyboard, Mouse, (IDE) DVD Drive, Monitor
Tale of Woe:
After eagerly awaiting the arrival of my packages for about a week! they Finally all arrived! I was so Excited! I almost had the whole thing put together that first evening I was home after work. I would have worked faster but since this is only the third system I have built myself I wanted to go slow and do it all right! I decided not to power it on until the morning because I knew the temptation to start loading an OS would be too great, so I slept (some) and in the morning I called in Sick to work :) so that I could spend the whole day loading software and learning this new aweful OS, then I hooked up the last component (the DVD drive which I took from my existing PC)
I double(or is it triple) checked all the connections inside the case and out. then I plugged in the power cord, and turned on the Power Supply (PSU), much to my delight I saw the little green LED on the Motherboard (MB) light up. "Good I have power" I think to myself, and then I press the power button. and much to my chagrin, All the fans, and Lights come on, for only a fraction of a second and then immediately shut back off. Man! talk about deflating! that was an terrible feeling! so then I checked everthing yet again, thinking I must have missed a cord somewhere, but no, it all looked fine, so thinking the problem may be in the switch I carefully hit the switch again... Same thing! So here I have this awesome machine, and it wont even boot to the BIOS! this is no good at all! So first step in debugging is reduce the number of variables until I can get it to work as expected. I unplug both SATA hard drives, these being what I have the least experience with. and Guess what? the thing goes through POST (Power On Self Test) and enters the BIOS just fine, at which point it of course tells me I have no Hard drives hooked up, which is what I expected, WHEW that was easy I think to myself, so I know one of my Hard drives is pooched! so I plug in HD 1 (they are both brand new and Identical so I randomly assigned them the numbers 1 and 2). and I try to boot. at this point it boots to the BIOS (here is where I kinda made a mistake, I didn't look to make sure that the BIOS detected the HD, which would have made my task of debugging later on a whole lot easier!). so I shut it down and switch to having only HD 2 hooked up.
Here is where it gets interesting :) when I first hit the power button for this second HD test, it started through POST just like HD 1 had, then about 2 seconds later... POOF!!! and the Magic Blue Smoke was released from HD 2. :D that was the first time I had done that so I made sure to watch carefully, and next time I swear I will keep my camera handy so I can get a good pic of the magic smoke leaving :D So now that I thought I had found what was wrong I went back to HD 1 and noticed that now (possibly before, but for sure now) the Hard drive was NOT recognized in the BIOS. I tried getting drivers.. nothing worked! so I decided that I must have fried the SATA controllers on the MB when I released the Magic Smoke. so I RMA both the MB and the smokeless HD 2. and waited a week and a half for the new parts :D
To test I took an IDE hard drive that I had sitting around and put it in the box, the BIOS saw the drive so I loaded the OS on it and everthing seamed to work fine! this is why I thought that the SATA controller on the MB must be defective.
Yesterday, I recieved my two new parts :) this time I knew pretty much exactly what I was doing so I got it all put together in about an hour, and I decided that I would just barely have time to load the OS. so I plugged in my keyboard, mouse, monitor... and powerd it on. this time I wasn't as excited when I saw the little green LED on the MB. but I was still very Deflated when it did the EXACT same thing when I tried powering it on the first time. GRRRR!!!! so I stopped there and said "I am not going to attempt anything else until I have done more research!". so I haev been trying all day at work (cough) to find out why this system would be giving me troubles!
Thoughts/Questions:
OK so did I (select all that apply)
1. also fry the HD 1 when I tried to use it, and must now RMA that as well.
2. have a second bad MB
3. have a bad PSU, (the problem was never the MB or HD's)
So do any of you folks have any Ideas about what's going on here? I am happy to answer questions...
I posted some questions on a computer forum... there is like nobody on there! it is sad! so I figured that maybe one of you other techie folks might be able to help answer my questions.
Thanks!
(The short version is that this system is giving me issues, will not POST/BIOS didn't see SATA HD's)
My New System:
Motherboard: Asus M3A32-MVP Deluxe
Processor: AMD Phenom 9850 BE
Video Card: Asus EAH3870/G/HTDI/512M Radeon
Ram: 4GB of Mushkin XP (2 x 2GB)
Hard Drives: 2* Seagate Barracuda 7200.11 500GB hard drives
Power Supply: Thermaltake W0116RU 750Watt
OS: Vista 64
Keyboard, Mouse, (IDE) DVD Drive, Monitor
Tale of Woe:
After eagerly awaiting the arrival of my packages for about a week! they Finally all arrived! I was so Excited! I almost had the whole thing put together that first evening I was home after work. I would have worked faster but since this is only the third system I have built myself I wanted to go slow and do it all right! I decided not to power it on until the morning because I knew the temptation to start loading an OS would be too great, so I slept (some) and in the morning I called in Sick to work :) so that I could spend the whole day loading software and learning this new aweful OS, then I hooked up the last component (the DVD drive which I took from my existing PC)
I double(or is it triple) checked all the connections inside the case and out. then I plugged in the power cord, and turned on the Power Supply (PSU), much to my delight I saw the little green LED on the Motherboard (MB) light up. "Good I have power" I think to myself, and then I press the power button. and much to my chagrin, All the fans, and Lights come on, for only a fraction of a second and then immediately shut back off. Man! talk about deflating! that was an terrible feeling! so then I checked everthing yet again, thinking I must have missed a cord somewhere, but no, it all looked fine, so thinking the problem may be in the switch I carefully hit the switch again... Same thing! So here I have this awesome machine, and it wont even boot to the BIOS! this is no good at all! So first step in debugging is reduce the number of variables until I can get it to work as expected. I unplug both SATA hard drives, these being what I have the least experience with. and Guess what? the thing goes through POST (Power On Self Test) and enters the BIOS just fine, at which point it of course tells me I have no Hard drives hooked up, which is what I expected, WHEW that was easy I think to myself, so I know one of my Hard drives is pooched! so I plug in HD 1 (they are both brand new and Identical so I randomly assigned them the numbers 1 and 2). and I try to boot. at this point it boots to the BIOS (here is where I kinda made a mistake, I didn't look to make sure that the BIOS detected the HD, which would have made my task of debugging later on a whole lot easier!). so I shut it down and switch to having only HD 2 hooked up.
Here is where it gets interesting :) when I first hit the power button for this second HD test, it started through POST just like HD 1 had, then about 2 seconds later... POOF!!! and the Magic Blue Smoke was released from HD 2. :D that was the first time I had done that so I made sure to watch carefully, and next time I swear I will keep my camera handy so I can get a good pic of the magic smoke leaving :D So now that I thought I had found what was wrong I went back to HD 1 and noticed that now (possibly before, but for sure now) the Hard drive was NOT recognized in the BIOS. I tried getting drivers.. nothing worked! so I decided that I must have fried the SATA controllers on the MB when I released the Magic Smoke. so I RMA both the MB and the smokeless HD 2. and waited a week and a half for the new parts :D
To test I took an IDE hard drive that I had sitting around and put it in the box, the BIOS saw the drive so I loaded the OS on it and everthing seamed to work fine! this is why I thought that the SATA controller on the MB must be defective.
Yesterday, I recieved my two new parts :) this time I knew pretty much exactly what I was doing so I got it all put together in about an hour, and I decided that I would just barely have time to load the OS. so I plugged in my keyboard, mouse, monitor... and powerd it on. this time I wasn't as excited when I saw the little green LED on the MB. but I was still very Deflated when it did the EXACT same thing when I tried powering it on the first time. GRRRR!!!! so I stopped there and said "I am not going to attempt anything else until I have done more research!". so I haev been trying all day at work (cough) to find out why this system would be giving me troubles!
Thoughts/Questions:
OK so did I (select all that apply)
1. also fry the HD 1 when I tried to use it, and must now RMA that as well.
2. have a second bad MB
3. have a bad PSU, (the problem was never the MB or HD's)
So do any of you folks have any Ideas about what's going on here? I am happy to answer questions...
I posted some questions on a computer forum... there is like nobody on there! it is sad! so I figured that maybe one of you other techie folks might be able to help answer my questions.
Thanks!