Assembled, checked 3 times, switched on AND....!

[ukdave]

Hi everyone
You've guessed – it didn't work! Yes I took 2 weeks just over putting everything together so carefully and with plenty of light, anti-static wrist-strap, earthed to ground and checked about every 30 minutes!! Despite this I need your kind help, because it SWITCHED on and did basically very little else. There was no smoke, or burning or anything like that so perhaps that is OK! And then of course as is usual I PANIC – because that is what we are supposed to do right? I did not let you down on this point.....!! What money I spent – Oh dear, etc. etc. going through my head and then – “ah there is Toms Hardware Forum”.

But before contacting you I did do some good homework myself, so I did try but I have not got the expertise to take it further. I read through lots of the postings and got quite a bit of “what to do next” help and followed it all. So apologies for the long posting, but I am hoping that all the info will help you to help me and thanks in advance for all your usual assistance.

Basic setup is as follows:

Motherboard – Intel D955XBK
Processor, Heatsink and fan – Intel 3.40 GHz Pentium 4 - 2MB L2-Cache 800MHz FSB
2 Maxtor SATA Hard Drives 250MB each
1 Mitsumi Floppy Disk Drive and card reader
Intel's own Front Panel USB/IEEE 1394/ Audio Solution
2 x 1GB of matching Crucial Memory modules
Logitech keyboard PS2
Microsoft Wheel Mouse Optical PS2
IIyama 19” Flatscreen monitor – Prolite E483S
HP DVD640 Lightscribe DVD ROM drive
Enermax PSU Noisetaker EG701 AX-VE(W) 600W
Lian-Li Aluminium case PC6077
Graphics card is the Asus Extreme AX550 Gamer Edition PCI Express (in x16 slot)
Fans are (2 in the Enermax PSU)
1 in the roof of the case
2 at the rear of the case
2 in the front of the case
1 on the Asus extreme AL550 graphics card
1 on the Intel Heatsink module

So what I did in the order of things after making sure all power and IDE/Floppy connectors were in place follows. One small point, no LED lights at all in the front panel came on and I realised from reading a posting somewhere that I had probably put the pins on the wrong way round. I had – so I reversed them and then the Blue Power on/off led light came on. But no other ones at all lit up, despite correcting the way round the pins had been assembled.

1.Ignored computer for a while, plugged in Monitor and switched it on. It naturally came up with a message of “No Signal”, which is to be expected. But at least the monitor functioned and I left it on for about 3 or 4 minutes. Then switched it off.

2.Connected monitor to computer, connected keyboard and mouse. Inserted the power supply lead to computer and plugged in to wall socket and switched the monitor and computer on.

3.What happened? Motherboard GREEN LED came on. 9 Fans all began spinning. Monitor indicated “No Signal”. There were no LED lights indicating at all in the front of the machine.
No burning smell or anything like that. The 2 SATA hard drives appear not to spin and to repeat the DVD-ROM drive indicator did not light up either. Basically to me who is uneducated in these matters – it seemed as if the processor/motherboard were not being able to pass the usual messages and checks around.

4. I got in touch with your Forum and read a number of postings on similar issues. As a result – this is what I did.

But just before I do that, let me mention something. When I first connected everything I made sure that firstly the screws that secured the board were carefully installed and was helped in this by the fact the Intel board has an area around each screw, keeping it safe from the board itself. To avoid grounding issues. Nevertheless I still looked between the metal to which it is attached and the underside of the board itself, best I could to ensure no bits and pieces, screws or wire or whatever were present. All looked OK in that respect.

Also I triple checked all connections such as power and floppy connectors, SATA cables and so on were all firmly in place. With regard to the leads for the Intel's own Audio solution they come with very clear labels indicating where each of the 4 color coded connectors should go on the board.

OK these are the checks I did in the last 4 hours following reading the postings on the forum here.

1.Removed each memory module in turn and replaced, testing at each stage. (NO CHANGE)
2.Removed Asus Graphics card and replaced firmly, tested. (NO CHANGE)
3.Removed Heatsink and Fan assembly.
4.Removed Processor and carefully replaced.
5.Replaced Heatsink and Fan assembly ensuring locking pins were firmly in place.
Tested. (NO CHANGE)

So to a beginner like me it seemed the only thing I had not done and truthfully would rather not do because of the extreme care I took in securing the board – is to remove all the mounting screws and replace. Because as I mentioned above it is very unlikely that the screw head would ever touch the delicate parts of the board itself.

I do realise you should keep things simple and always look for the most simple solution first and I did try to do this. In fact down to making sure that the power supply leads to both monitor and computer were firmly in their sockets. Also I took out the D-SUB mini 15Pin connector (VGA) in both monitor and computer and replaced to ensure these were OK too.

So – come on all – please do not tell me either the Processor or the Board are failing, because that would be a problem in 2 areas. (a) The aggro to get things replaced! And (b) I wouldn't know how to check which one or both are faulty!! Lets hope it is the most SIMPLE solution works in the end.

Thanks and I will take 2 pills for my headache and pass it over to the brains...! One day I will report a working computer – how's that for “can do” attitude! If this does eventually get cracked then I hope it will help many others that experience exactly the same difficulty as I have at present. That is one of the reasons for this long posting. Hope you don't mind this.

David :?

PS Incidentally there were no BEEPS at all from the onboard pizo speaker. Could you let me know if a Graphics card was not connecting correctly, would this mean the computer board would not be able to fire up in any fashion? i.e LED lights for DVD-ROM and SATA hard drives etc...

 

[CRAFTSMAN_69]

Try clearing CMOS (Instructions in the motherboard manual)

 

[CallumN]

Sounds to me like a dead PSU, ar atleast a dead rail.

 

[luminaris]

If your not getting post beep but lights and fans, you've got good power. Its hardware related. Probably to do with the HSF. The Socket 775 can be tricky to get the stock HSF seated right. Its crucial to ensure it is to or you will have problems with it. I would take craftmans advice and clear the BIOS first. If that doesn't work, reseat and make triple sure that fan is seated good on that processor. Also, make sure the fan is plugged into the right connector on the MB making sure, its connected good on those pins. I know that sounds stupid but that is common and it happens to the best of us. While your there, make sure you've got both power supply connections on the MB connected.

I for one don't think you have anything bad there, just something simple that needs a nudge to get it working. Good luck and let us know what happens.

 

[ukdave]

.....While your there, make sure you've got both power supply connections on the MB connected.

I for one don't think you have anything bad there, just something simple that needs a nudge to get it working. Good luck and let us know what happens.

Thanks so far to you all for your prompt help and I will go ahead and follow the advice. Just for the moment though - Have I done something really stupid?

Your advice "Luminaris" re both power supply connections...
I have only connected that large main connector next to the floppy motherboard connector. Should there be another one, because this could be the reason. I did not notice this!

This could be the WHOLE problem. I can't look at it for about another hour but will do so and later report back. In the meantime - many many thanks. Be in touch.
David

 

[luminaris]

yes, there should be a smaller 4 pin molex connector which should connect near the main power feed on the board itself. This supplies supplemental power for the CPU. Also commonly overlooked is the graphics card power connection. This will cause problems too however, my geforce cards have an annoying little buzzer that goes off if this is not connected properly.

 

[CallumN]

Still doesnt not justify the CD drives and HDD's not coming to life.

 

[pat]

do it simple man..

take the motherboard out of the case, on a non conductive surface as well as the PSU. plug it the CPU/FAN, RAM and video card. Power it on. you should see it post, then complaining about keyboard error or that no bootable devices can be found. Which is good, since you don't have any connected.

Go to this point and come back.

 

[cedric]

Once i had a problem ressembling this .try to check the board battery if inserted correctly .I may not be able to help u but i hope that u dont lose anything.LAST option is to get help from a nearby tect.Its difficult for us to know exactly ze problem cause we dont have the rig in front of us.

 

[luminaris]

that's right because he's not even getting to post beep which I believe is a power issue. I had the exact same thing happen to my other P4 machine. Turns out, the processor wasn't seated good enough. No post beep, only a yellow light on the front of the case. As soon as I reseated it, everything came to life.

 

[kyleawesome]

A few other things that I thought of off the top of my head are:

One some newer MOBO's they actually require up to 4 power connectors, one being the 20/24 pin, one being the squared 4-pin molex and the other two are normally standard 4-pin molex connections that supply supplemental power to various parts of the MOBO. Make sure that you have all the connections in place.

Yes, the CMOS is very important, make sure you do clear the CMOS, and also make sure that the CMOS jumper (clear RTC jumper) wasn't moved/knocked off during setup.

If your MOBO has one, check to see if the power LED is light.

Something else no one mentioned, if you have a chassis intrusion detector make sure it is disabled, sometimes they will prohibit the unit from posting.

That’s really all I can come up with, without repeating what everyone else has said.

 

[ukdave]

Hi - Luminaris and others - many thanks to you all. It is getting a bit late now here in the UK 21:38 and I have been on it all day so think I will have to quit soon. However here is an update because you have all worked so well on my behalf. However I cannot keep up with all the suggestions at the moment but thank everyone for them anyway and perhaps will need them later.

That clue you gave me Luminaris about the extra power supply seems to have helped tremendously. At least now I get a message on the screen, and to assist I have put a picture on my Freewebs website where I am learning that too! The picture is of the message I got on the screen on booting up having put in that extra power supply connector that I had overlooked. It is at this link:
Screen message on boot-up Select Image number 1 and then menu choice "full screen".

No beep however at all on boot-up.
Also no messages on the screen that I expected, of its counting memory and perhaps showing - is it BIOS information and so on. But in the BIOS it seems to have all the necessary information on processor and the like.

With regard to LEDs on front panel:
The HP DVD-ROM light comes on.
The Blue Power on/off light comes on.
The hard disk drives red LED indicator comes on.
Keyboard lights up and works
NO LIGHTS FOR FLOPPY however.
The Microsoft optical mouse shows no LED red light (wonder if this works later).

It is a USB powered floppy and card reader combined and I have taken the +5V power feed from the USB 1 connector currently unoccupied with 10 pins available. Have chosen the connections Pins 2/4/6/8 which are Power +5V D- D+ and Ground respectively. The connection is the right way round too. Has this anything to do with it not showing the LED lights because of this type of power feed instead of the traditional floppy only power connection which I am familiar with in the past. This is the first time I have used a combined piece of equipment like this with a USB feed.

Nevertheless I pressed F2 to see if I could get into the BIOS and I could.
Boot-up order was for the DVD-ROM and then FLOPPY (so does that mean it does recognize it - and I might still have that connector the wrong way round and therefore the lights don't show?) Both "Maxtors" were recognized, and the Processor, RAM and so on.

So are we getting there between us now. Should I still perservere to get that Floppy and Card reader combined to show the light. Or is it good enough that the BIOS recognizes that there is a Floppy drive?

That's about it for tonight folks, and before I leave many many thanks for your help. Because without that comment about the 2 power supply connectors - it would never have got this far.

How soon now before I have to start with my operating system, Windows XP Professional SP2 or have I still got a bit to do with my hardware? For example:

I have got 2 SATA drives but I do NOT want to use RAID - however do I HAVE to install both RAID drivers for the BLUE and BLACK SATA connectors on the board despite only wanting to use them as 2 separate drives (currently connected to the BLACK connectors). I did notice that when I pressed Ctrl S as asked for on the screen initially to have a look at the Utility, it indicated that it was DISABLED. That is surely how I should leave it - yes? But perhaps I STILL have to put in those drivers. Ideas on this welcome.

I sort of feel that if I was to put in the Operating system disk, things would begin to work. Is that correct? Does it for example do my disk formatting and organising partitioning for me?

I suppose my very big error in not putting in that extra power supply may help someone down the line, and the checks I did try earlier may also help if they had not come across them before. I hope so..

Thanks again.
David

 

[TurtleMan]

I have taken the +5V power feed from the USB 1 connector currently unoccupied with 10 pins available. Have chosen the connections Pins 2/4/6/8 which are Power +5V D- D+ and Ground respectively.

I'm not following this: USB headers don't have extra pins. If you've got some left over, you're connecting to the wrong thing.

Also, the boot failure message is normal if your drives are new and unpartitioned, but it's not clear that your BIOS is even recognizing your SATA drives. Are they visible anywhere in the BIOS setup menu?

Finally, you DO need to install the SATA drivers during setup.

t-man

 

[pat]

Finally, you DO need to install the SATA drivers during setup.

t-man

Humm... How come, a big company like Intel is not able to have native chipset support for SATA interfave when company like nvidia, SIS, ULI, VIA can all use SATA HDD natively without any drivers and that, for more than 2 years???

Is Intel screwing with their chipset now?

I don't think that, if correctly configured, he needs drivers for normal SATA operation.

 

[ak47is1337]

have the bios update through a floppy asap.

 

[luminaris]

Alright, thats good at least we're getting somewhere now. What that means is your BIOS is not registering or seeing your hard drive. What you may have to do is rearrange your BIOS boot order to read DVD ROM then hard drive next. That way you can load your operating system easier. It sounds as if your BIOS is not in the proper boot order unless I read it wrong.

So far, you've got power to the board and it looks good so far. What you might wanna do now that I think about it is go ahead and reset the BIOS. Make sure when you move the jumper, keep it on reset for at least 20-30 seconds for a good reset to take place. Reboot the machine and see what happens.

Still no post beep indicates a hardware problem. More than likely thats because its not detecting the hard drive. Check your IDE cables too and make sure they are not backwards. Usually what I do in these cases where theres trouble is go head and disconnect all IDE cables from the drives except HDD of course until I know the hard drive is going to boot up good.

Hope this works at least your getting closer man. Try these things and post back.

 

[ukdave]

I have taken the +5V power feed from the USB 1 connector currently unoccupied with 10 pins available. Have chosen the connections Pins 2/4/6/8 which are Power +5V D- D+ and Ground respectively.

I'm not following this: USB headers don't have extra pins. If you've got some left over, you're connecting to the wrong thing.

Also, the boot failure message is normal if your drives are new and unpartitioned, but it's not clear that your BIOS is even recognizing your SATA drives. Are they visible anywhere in the BIOS setup menu?

Finally, you DO need to install the SATA drivers during setup.

t-man

Thanks Turtleman.
OK on this USB having extra pins. My combined Floppy and card reader says that it has to have a USB header on my motherboard to join its 4 socket connector to for it to get its power from. Now I have two blocks of USB headers each configured pin-out numbers 1 to 10 on the Intel Integration guide I have been supplied with at the time of purchasing the motherboard.Now one of the USB headers is populated with a connection from the Intel supplied audio front panel unit and as you suggest covers the entire header.

So all I could have to deal with in regard to USB unless I am missing something is the remaining unpopulated header. On looking at the plan it shows pins 2,4,6 and 8 as I indicated earlier. So I used them, because I could find no other source of power supply. The sockets themselves showed the same power indicators as the headers plan showed - so I used them. This was wrong then - is that what you mean?

I really don't know Turtleman, but I could find no alternative USB 4 Pin-out to use. So please let me know for sure if this is wrong and as I have no further alternative, should I forget this card-reader and go and purchase a basic floppy drive. Grateful if you could advice on this.

Puzzled as to where anyone would therefore find a 4-pin USB pin-out to supply this unit. But thanks for the observation and I wait to hear.

With regard to the 2 Maxtor Hard drives. Yes the BIOS indicated they were both present as it did for the DVD-ROM drive and the FLOPPY drive. It is just that the floppy drive LED did not light up.

Thanks for your kind interest in my problems. With regard to the RAID drivers. Would I first have to ENABLE the BIOS to install them, and because I do not want to set up a RAID system, do I then go back in and disable that section later. But in the course of installing the drivers would I have to set up "volumes" or whatever it asks for and subsequently just forget about them, and disable that setting?

Regards.
David

 

[ukdave]

Luminaris
Hi - No actually my BIOS seemed to be OK, when I pressed F2 and went to the BOOT section it showed the following boot order as default:

DVD-ROM (and later it stated that it was the HP model too)
Floppy Drive
then the 2 Hard Drives which it also identified as Maxtor.
(All this about the drives and of course no formatting has taken place, which I was therefore surprised to see) - but I am learning so this is all new.

I did check the above carefully. To me it seemed that the screen message was asking for some media such as the Windows XP Professional operating system. But this was just a guess.

So can you clear something up for me. This beep that keeps being referred to - does it HAVE to occur once if OK and more times if something is WRONG? I had been imagining that if you switched a computer on and all was well it would NOT beep.

I need help in clarifying this please.
David

 

[luminaris]

yeah, you should get at least one post beep to indicate a good BIOS boot. Any more than one, you've got problems. If the boot order is good and your floppy is coming up, check the power to it. If the IDE cable was backwards, the light on the drive would come up solid. Keep plugging away at it man.

 

[mdd1963]

"The 2 SATA hard drives appear not to spin and to repeat the DVD-ROM drive indicator did not light up either. Basically to me who is uneducated in these matters – it seemed as if the processor/motherboard were not being able to pass the usual messages and checks around. "

Power supply....

Get another, and ensure your Aux cpu pwr cable (4 pin) is connected to mainboard....

 

[TurtleMan]

Does your floppy connector happen to look like this?

t-man

 

[TurtleMan]

How come, a big company like Intel is not able to have native chipset support for SATA interfave when company like nvidia, SIS, ULI, VIA can all use SATA HDD natively without any drivers and that, for more than 2 years???

Well, they don't, Pat. Neither of my last two mobos (both with VIA chipsets) had native SATA support: Abit AV8 and ASUS A8V-deluxe. Both are quite recent technology.

 

[ukdave]

Does your floppy connector happen to look like this?

t-man

No - the one I was referring to does not look like that and to assist in this posting I have put up a link to my small learning Freewebs website and would ask you to look at images 1 through to 4 and select the FULL SIZE menu choice. Images for you to look at

But Turtleman - you are so right to have put that image there because that is precisely what I should have been looking at!! Let me explain - I have learned a lot today from a local Electronics shop where a man went into quite a bit of detail for me. Here is what happened...

He said that I had failed to grasp the important point that a combined card reader and floppy drive had 2 power requirements, the one was where I had placed the connection on the 10 pin out header. That operated the card reader and it had both power and data needs. Now he added the floppy also needed power which I had overlooked thinking because it was USB powered - that meant everything!! This is where your image comes in I believe - that is the connection I should have made to the back of the combined drive to power the floppy drive itself. So now I did that and it all WORKS!! Phew! Learning all the time...

So thanks again for taking the interest you did.

Now can I join in - but not contribute! because I do not have that knowledge in the discussion you were having with Pat on your last posting re SATA drives. Because I would like to be clear on all this. I have put a BIOS image I took on BOOT-UP for you to look at on the images I have referred you to. Basically the BIOS notes both my SATA hard drives as Maxtor and if I look further (which is not in the image) under some I believe advanced drive configuration - it currently notes them as IDE and not RAID.

Turtleman would this mean in fact that if I did not load any RAID drivers but just ignored the request to install them, that in fact my operating system Windows XP Professional would just treat them as 2 independent hard disks?

Another point that interests me is this. I read somewhere recently something to the effect that a one partition hard disk is better than a multi-partitioned one. Now if having got my hardware to work I believe possibly reasonably, I were to insert the O/S disk and format, when I come to partitioning is the consensus of opinion here that it would be better to just keep 2 separate disks each partitioned as one unit and use Folders to organise things? Or alternatively because partitions presumably keep things COMPLETELY separate, if something went drastically wrong on one partition you could have saved a backup on the other partitions and recover the situation.

Anyway that's it for the moment and thanks to EVERYONE who came to my aid. And as other people join the Forum and come across our discussions lets hope they benefit from all our chats.

Regards.
David

 

[luminaris]

That black 4 pin connector is a firewire connector. Or it could be a USB connector. What you probably need to do now is load the operating system and yes, I've read that using dual disks in a raid setup can actually decrease performance in some cases.

 

[cubber]

Intel puts things in their products like SATA support whenever they feel like it, not due to customer demand. Their design cycles are very long, and they can't respond quickly like the little guys out there. An article I read long ago in the RAMBUS dark days referred to the "Intel Ship of State", meaning a large ocean liner can't easily change course. That's why we were inflicted with the RAMBUS mess for so long.

Most USB mobo headers only use 4 pins, if there's a 5th one it's an extra ground for shielding, but unnecessary.

By the way, the metallic rings around the screw holes on the mobo are supposed to be contacting the screws for grounding purposes. (I didn't quite get if you were attempting to isolate them in the first posting, apologies if I misread)

Strip down your system to the bare essentials to set it up, rather than plugging in everything at once. Too many points of failure/contention.

Start with:
Mobo
memory
Power supply
one hard drive
one optical drive
one floppy if you need SATA/RAID floppy support (connect only the floppy cable and power, not the USB portion)
Keyboard
mouse

Get that happy with WinXP installed, then add one component at a time, let Windows discover the hardware, and get it fully happy before proceeding. If problems arise then you have a clue as to what's causing a problem, probably the new component or something earlier that the new item conflicts with. Or you're hitting the limits of the power supply, but I doubt that, it's a pretty beefy reliable PSU.

If this doesn't work, try to substitute a different power supply and see if it changes things. Then try substituting the above components one at a time with something comparable (if it's possible) to determine if you have a bum piece of hardware.

You might need to set up the system with a PATA hard drive first, (in which case disconnect the floppy drive for now) and get Windows happy with the drivers for the SATA and RAID hardware. Then copy the boot partition to the SATA drive using something like Partition Magic and then change it to be the boot drive and remove the PATA drive.

Good luck!