EUREKA!----almost

Kevin · Post by **Kevin** » Thu Jun 28, 2007 5:23 pm

I'm back, the guy that first asked about the Zalman cooler and then drilled four holes in his motherboard. Well it took me a few weeks but I went FROM:

1.3 Ghz CPU, 256 DDR RAM, Stock cpu cooler and PSU that sounded like planes taking off, Stock Maxtor 80 Gb Hd that sounded like dentist drill in dusty HP case

TO:

SONATA Case and PSU that I am satisfied with, Samsung spinpoint notebook HD suspended with elastic cord, AMD 3400 64 bit chip topped with afformentioned Zalman cooler, 1 GB of matched DDR 400 RAM on a Foxconn motherboard with Nvidea GeForce graphics capable of dual monitors built in

All of this for under $270, I am years ahead of where I was on the development curve. This is the first PC I have built from scratch. And the best part is, it is QUIET. I can hear the springs in the keys on the keyboard stretching as I push them down. I can hear cars going by down the street. I used to hear my computer from halfway up the stairs, now I have to kneel down next to it and put my ear close to hear it.

BUT there is still one problem. I get into CMOS / BIOS fine. (I have never had one with so much available information compared to storebought PCs) Each and every piece of hardware is identified correctly. I had the old harddrive in there and I could boot onto it, but not onto cd drive. Then with the new HD, still couldn't boot onto a CD drive. I know what you are thinking, I changed the boot order to CD, then HD. I have a CD-RW and DVD-ROM I tried them in every combination from the way they were in the old PC to each drive individually, with jumper moved to master. I used the old cable, does that matter? It still plugs in so it should be the same specs, right? Whatever I have tried I get, drive boot error, insert system cd, then press enter, then nothing I tried the motherboard driver disk still nothing. By the way I am feeding it live linux cds, shouldn't need a HD at all does that matter? Is there some 3.5 floppy program out there I need? Did I miss something in the BIOS? Since everything identified correctly, I would assume the BIOS should know what to do with it. Anyway I am rambling and there isn't much else I can think of that is relevant but if you guys help me figure this one out my first official act will be to send pics of the "mangled mobo"

lm · Post by lm » Thu Jun 28, 2007 6:35 pm

Make sure your "bootable CD" can boot some other computer.

Kevin · Post by **Kevin** » Thu Jun 28, 2007 7:42 pm

yes, several other computers. The live CDs are designed to be both a trial version that can be run without changing anything on the hard drive, as well as a complete OS that can be installed from the CD. They are also handy for troubleshooting. I tried copies of Knoppix and Ubuntu, both of which I have used on at least three other PCs of various levels of performance without incident.

Mr Evil · Post by **Mr Evil** » Thu Jun 28, 2007 8:01 pm

My motherboard has a peculiar BIOS bug whereby if both USB mouse and keyboard support is set to "BIOS" it won't boot from some devices. You don't have the same motherboard as me, or even the same manufacturer, so it's unlikely to be the same problem but it might be worth checking.

Kevin · Post by **Kevin** » Fri Jun 29, 2007 1:31 am

I just got in....
Mr. Evil I think you were on to something.
In my BIOS I didn't have USB keyboard support enabled.
I enabled that and did nothing else and now after the 15th try it looks like I have something usable. I am going to go to work in a little bit but it looks like after that I will be installing on OS and taking some pictures!