New PC won't Boot

[patrickmcnelis]

I just finished building a new gaming pc. It will start and will get into BIOS with keyboard support, but anything past the initial boot screen my keyboard (USB) will not work. If I let it go through the motions it says that Windows was not shut down properly...hit Enter to start Windows nornally..." But I can't hit enter because my keyboard isn't being recognized. If I then let it count down and load automatically it opens the Windows load screen for a second, then I get a flash of BSOD, and the pc reboots itself and starts the process all over again. If I put in the Vista disk to boot from the disk, I cannot "hit any key" to boot from DVD/CD. I was hoping it was not a bad board, but I am thinking it might be. I thought it might be an underpowered PSU. Here is the setup

Gigabyte GA-MA790GP-UD4H
Phenom II X4 940 Black Edition
8GB Dual Channel 1066mHz RAM (2x2x2048) (I tried dropping to 2 DIMMS then 1 DIMM)
GTX 260 Core 216
WD 500 gb SATA
LG DVD/CD SATA
Ultra 550W PSU

The HDD was a recent upgrade to my old PC and I swapped it into this one because I wanted it in my new PC. The PSU was also from the old computer and seemed to work just fine (albeit on a much less powerful PC...Athlon XP 2800+ for example). Everything else save the keyboard and mouse is new.

Any ideas?

 

[Outlander_04]

check in BIOS that usb keyboard is enabled

or try a PS2 keyboard

and even then it might not boot since the windows installation has drivers for your previous mb and not the new one . The fix is to save your data and do a clean install of vista

 

[hunter315]

Try to scrounge up a PS2 keyboard, or one of those green USB to PS2 adapters and see if they will work.

The boot cycle you are describing is exactly what my new build is doing, but i expected it as im not installing windows 7 until tomorrow. Basically its loading up basic stuff then realizing it doesnt recognize any of the hardware, crashing, and trying again. You are going to need to reinstall the OS and it should work fine.

 

[patrickmcnelis]

Thanks for the help, all.

Here's what I discovered:

I found the USB support toggles in the BiOS and turned them on...I would have thought in a modern board they would be on by default, but I guess those Japanese designers like to chuckle at people fumbling around as much as anyone else...

Second, and most important issue, my Vista install was the 32-bit version...it crashed to BSOD because it could not figure out what to do with the quad core 64bit CPU. That's my edumacated guess anyway. Luckily I had anticipated just such a problem and downloaded the Windows 7 RC for 64bit ISO and burned it to a disk and used that to install a 64bit compatible OS. (FYI, I also ordered the 64bit upgrade for Vista from MS...it only cost $9.98...though compatibility for both on one disk would have been nice given I paid the full install price for Home Premium to begin with.)

After a lengthy install process and a couple of adjustments, Windows 7 seems to be ticking along quite nicely on this rig. I may have to keep it.