New build old HDD?

[RandomUnknown]

i just put alittle rig together and i want to know if my old hard drive will work. heres the parts a bought,

MSI 790fx-gd70
PhenomII x4 3.2
Mushkin DDR3 1600
ATI Radeon 5870
AZZA 850w psu
X-Dreamer case

my hard drive is a WD wd6401AALS 640GB 7200 RPM

I tried just slapping it all together with the old HD but cant even get a post? everything is compatible right?
also when i tried to boot all the little blue LEDs lit up on the mobo and the HDD LED lights red, and out of all the buttons on the mobo the reset is the only one lit, almost like its telling me something..... lol

oh and BTW its my first build >.<

 

[dndhatcher]

There is a sticky with the steps for a non-posting system you should follow. 90% of the time following those directions will get your problem solved.

With a new motherboard, you will need to re-install the OS. It wont run windows reliably with the old install. You should be able to get into bios and boot on the CD without a hard drive even installed.

 

[aford10]

^ +1
It's always good to do a fresh windows install when doing a build. You don't want old drivers conflicting with new ones. The fresh install will clean out all that old garbage that you've forgot was even on the drive.

You've put together a pretty nice system, but I'm not a big fan of that PSU.

Double check the 4/8 pin CPU power is connected. It goes from the PSU to the board, next to the CPU socket.

You have an MSI board, did you connect the led bracket? If yes, it should be displaying a light code. Compare the diagnostic code to your motherboard manual to find where to start.

 

[RandomUnknown]

ok well so far with messin with it ive got it to load window on my old HD, so im gonna go back up all my files i want to save then run my HDDs system recovery to reinstall vista. that should work just fine right? cause i dont want to lose all my s3xy prons if its not gonna help! lol j/k

also in case anyone tries to do the same thing, i think my initial problem was i had a Nvidia card installed. may not have recognized my ATI card. so i put my HD in my back up and i uninstalled it and went ahead and put my ATIs driver in and it booted. yay for my newbness

also thanks for the replys

 

[aford10]

If you're talking about the restore points, yes, it should work.

If you've got your OS disc, I would recommend using that instead.

 

[RandomUnknown]

Ya im talking about the system recovery that formats it back to the way it came, working but nothing on it. i dont have any OS cd atm and i dont want to lose my vistas!

 

[aford10]

Your hard drive isn't one that would normally come in a older retail system. I was just making sure you weren't talking about a retail OEM restore partition.

Restore points should work fine, though not ideal.

 

[RandomUnknown]

ok i need help now! i got it to load windows, then i used the Recovery center to restore to factory settings and everything was fine. i installed all my drivers for mobo and Graphics card, reboot and still fine. i removed a few things i didnt want like google desktop and random stuff it restored then was gonna update windows via the system update manager in Control panel and i said it couldnt install cause some reason i didnt bother to look at... =O so i shut down and now nothing.... no boot what so ever. i completely removed the hard drive to see if i messed up something but the board doesnt even post? sometimes the fans start on high or max and other times low speed but other then that nothing. theres 2 lights on the mobo that are supposed to like up a code, like CF then C3, C4 ect... when booting but they dont light anymore? did my board just take a ***? there was no unplugging involved or changing of any kind to the hardware so idk what i did? help would be greatly appreciated!

 

[aford10]

Start with just the basics. Unplug your opticals, add on cards...etc.

All you want plugged in is: CPU, PSU, video card, hard drive, and 1 stick of RAM.

 

[RandomUnknown]

If i had a beeping code that might help lol, anyway im not getting the post leds. ive been trolling forums to see if other ppl have my problem and many cant get a post or to the bios but they all get the post leds, all the other leds light up on the board so idk, im just gonna RMA it. probably for a refund and just stick with what i have.

yay for not being eligible for RMAs! ok im out of ideas... if anyone has any suggestions at all ill try em...

 

[aford10]

MSI doesn't usually ship their boards with an internal speaker. They use LED brackets for light codes. It looks like this
http://www.hardwarezone.com/img/data/articles/2004/1247/msi_d-bracket2.jpg

Even without the diagnostic code, you can still try booting with minimal components and see if you get through the POST.

 

[RandomUnknown]

ok i tryed booting with one stick of ram in the closest slot to the CPU, and still got nothing. switched out for that other stick and same. the fans are spinning at a slow speed and the HDD sounds like its loading. tryed without HD on both sticks and no extras, even took out my CD tray. All the little LEDs are lit but the Post LEDs stays off and my screen stays blank? i really have no idea what the problem is lol, it was running fine when i first booted it then after a shutdown it just never came back? kinda sux. i sent an Email to newegg to see if they can do something about it.

 

[aford10]

When you say 'all the LEDs are lit,' are you referring to the LED bracket that I linked above?

You may want to try pulling the battery for ~15 minutes. This will reset the BIOS. Put the battery back in, and try to power up.