1st time powering on. Not appearing to boot. Help please.

[HogCooter]

Hey there, I have owned and worked on pc's since my first 386DX but I have never actually built one from the ground up. I am building this for my sons Christmas present and will be his only gift this year. Any help on this would be GREATLY appreciated.

I assembled everything according to the manuals and finally powered her up today. All the fans and lights come on but I hear no beeping and don't appear to hear anything else come on. I thought the motherboard would at least give a basic setup screen on the monitor but my monitor doesn't even register an input. I tested the monitor on another pc and it works fine.

My thoughts on what might be wrong and I was wondering if you have advice:

Hard drive (sata) is virgin and not even formatted. --------(Seagate Barracuda ST2000DM001 2TB 7200 RPM)
Do I need to format on another PC?

Video card drivers are not installed. --------(SAPPHIRE Vapor-X 100358VXL Radeon HD 7770)
But how do I install them on a new build?

Motherboard problem? --------(GIGABYTE GA-970A-UD3)

CPU --------(AMD Phenom II X4 965)

Memory -------(1 x G.SKILL Ripjaws X Series(2 x 4GB) 240-Pin DDR3 SDRAM DDR3 1600)

Power Supply -------(Cooler Master 500w Power Supply)

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[djosbun]

Make sure the RAM is fully seated into the mobo. You might want to try and boot with one RAM stick installed, to see if you have a bad module.

Don't worry about the video card drivers. They will install once the computer boots up fully (it'll "find new hardware"). However, if the motherboard has onboard video, see if the system will boot up with the video card removed.

Is the fan turning in, inside the power supply?

Have you removed the cpu and cooler for any reason? If yes, check for bent pins and make sure cooler is attached correctly.

Just try to boot with just the basics/minimum installed.

 

[HogCooter]

Make sure the RAM is fully seated into the mobo. You might want to try and boot with one RAM stick installed, to see if you have a bad module.

Don't worry about the video card drivers. They will install once the computer boots up fully (it'll "find new hardware"). However, if the motherboard has onboard video, see if the system will boot up with the video card removed.

Is the fan turning in, inside the power supply?

Have you removed the cpu and cooler for any reason? If yes, check for bent pins and make sure cooler is attached correctly.

Just try to boot with just the basics/minimum installed.

I'll try and remove a memory stick. I had difficulty getting the cpu cooler on but have not removed the cpu at all. With the hard drive not being formatted or anything, would that effect anything? MOBO does not have onboard video.

 

[HogCooter]

I took a memory stick out, nothing. All the fans and lights power up. Here's a pic if it helps.

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[djosbun]

Many years ago I put together a system and didn't notice that the cpu cooler wasn't on fully (or it popped off slightly). System would turn on and turn right off. You might want to double-check that, or take it off, clean off the cooling compound with alcohol and a coffee filter (or other lint-free cloth), apply fresh Artic Silver and stick the cooler back on.

Do you see anything appear on the video display? If the hard drive was not formatted, at least it would give you a message on the screen (then you can change the boot order, boot from the CD ROM with your Windows CD installed, and install your operating systems).

 

[djosbun]

Oh wait- I see that you installed your RAM modules incorrectly. You have one stick in the blue slot and one in the white slot. They should be installed in the same color (both in blue).

And are you SURE you have the motherboard power installed correctly? I believe that some have more than one power connector.

 

[djosbun]

Looking at your original pic, it looks like the 8-pin power connection on the motherboard isn't plugged into the power supply. That power block is near the upper left-hand corner of the mobo.

 

[unoriginal1]

http://www.tomshardware.com/forum/261145-31-perform-steps-posting-post-boot-video-problems

^+1 to the advice above.
Just wanted to give this checklist, go through all steps

 

[HogCooter]

Looking at your original pic, it looks like the 8-pin power connection on the motherboard isn't plugged into the power supply. That power block is near the upper left-hand corner of the mobo.

That's correct, I also had another optional power connection 12 pin "I assumed", that is on the right next to the ram slots that I plugged in to instead of the 8-pin connector. Am I incorrect? Or, do you actually hook up power to both?

 

[HogCooter]

http://www.tomshardware.com/forum/261145-31-perform-steps-posting-post-boot-video-problems

^+1 to the advice above.
Just wanted to give this checklist, go through all steps

Oh. I must read this. Thanks for the link.

 

[djosbun]

You must hook up both of those power connectors. This is why your system is not booting.

You can thank me by donating $10 to a charity linked to those poor Connecticut school shooting victims.

 

[HogCooter]

You must hook up both of those power connectors. This is why your system is not booting.

You can thank me by donating $10 to a charity linked to those poor Connecticut school shooting victims.

My son is coming in from school and he can't see it so I will check this in the AM. Thank you!

 

[HogCooter]

Thank you very much, I now have a screen on my monitor. The gigabyte page flashes shortly then I get a command line asking to insert OS disk. I purchased an OEM windows 7 home, I am assuming that it will install when I insert the disk? I did read some things about an OPK installation needed. Any advice on going further?

....................and Windows installing. Thank you very much.



Holy crap. The power went out of my house as I was installing windows. Now when it gets to the screen it says bootmgr is missing, press ctrl alt del to continue. It keeps looping.

 

[unoriginal1]

Thank you very much, I now have a screen on my monitor. The gigabyte page flashes shortly then I get a command line asking to insert OS disk. I purchased an OEM windows 7 home, I am assuming that it will install when I insert the disk? I did read some things about an OPK installation needed. Any advice on going further?

Just follow the prompts/steps to install. It's pretty straight forward and easy.
If you run into issues just come back and post.

 

[HogCooter]

Just follow the prompts/steps to install. It's pretty straight forward and easy.
If you run into issues just come back and post.

Holy crap. The power went out of my house as I was installing windows. Now when it gets to the screen it says bootmgr is missing, press ctrl alt del to continue. It keeps looping. I've gone back in and told to boot to cd so I hope that works.

 

[HogCooter]

Best answer selected by HogCooter.