Installing XP (square peg round hole)

[Guest]

Here's my trouble in heartrending detail.
I'm a newbie. I've decided to put together my first box and everything was going well untill.....

I've installed the following
Soyo Dragon+ Motherboard
Yamaha 24x CDRW
512 crucial DDR DRAM
Western Digital 40GB Hard Drive
GeForce Ti 200 video card
Everything else is not hooked up yet since I intend to add them once I have a system up and running.


The Trouble.
When I turn the system on everything starts fine. The hard drive spins up, the fans all go on etc. I've checked and doublechecked the connections.
I get two short beeps on a black screen and then the light type for a few seconds. A few more seconds of black and then the motherboard BIOS come up. The BIOS are fairly extensive and I've changed all the parameters I could think of and then reset them in an attempt to be able to load XP or format the hard drive. To no avail. Whatever I do I cannot go anywhere but the motherboard BIOS.

I've tried:
Switching the Bios to load from CD Drive.
Making a system flopy of Windows 98 and loading from the floppy.
fiddling around with the Bios,
rebooting while hitting esc. or delete or enter numerous times.
loading the cd before or during boot up etc.

I'm stumped. I don't, in fact, know what is supposed to happen having never done this before.
I hope I've been through.
Any help is appreciated.

Jeff


<b><font color=purple> Ain't no sunshine when she's gone. </font color=purple> </b>

 

[jktzweiss]

Have you partitioned your hard drive? If not, you must. Use your windows 98 boot disk and at a: fdisk & create a primary dos partition, exit fdisk and at a: format c: /s. After format is complete, restart and enter bios and change your 1st boot device to your master cdrom device save and exit your bios and reboot with xp cdrom in your drive. When xp start up begins, it will give you the opportunity to change the file system over to ntfs if you like.. Hope this helps..JW

 

[Guest]

I've tried using a boot disk in the floppy but its not doing anything. Im unsure if the bootdisk is correct. Is there a site to download a boot disk???

<b><font color=purple> Ain't no sunshine when she's gone. </font color=purple> </b>

 

[Guest]

It sounds like you have a hardware problem, disconnect everything except video, memory, power, keyboard and CPU/fan to the mainboard. power it up and see if you still have the prob, if not hook one thing at a time and keep trying. You may have the wrong settings for the memory and/or cpu which would cause the bios screen to pop up, if this is the case go to set to optimal setting , or something like that on the main bios screen and try that.
On the other hand I chrge a bill to diag an setup a computer, or someone close to you prob does the same thing...

 

[jktzweiss]

Have a friend that has a win 98 machine? Create it there or try this link..http://support.microsoft.com/support/kb/articles/Q186/3/00.ASP

 

[Guest]

www.bootdisk.com

 

[Zoron]

What type of CPU are you using? In a lot of cases if the CPU isn't configured properly in the BIOS setup, the computer will not boot.

<font color=red> If you design software that is fool-proof, only a fool will want to use it. </font color=red>

 

[Guest]

Hello,
I have the following problems.
I am building a new system around the Dragon+. Everything powers on and the Bios recognize the hard drive, floppy and CDRW. Most of the time when I power on I gget one long beep that, from reading the manual, tells me that the memory is not seated pproperly. This may happen 4 or 5 times. I power off and reinstall the memory to try to get it to work. I've tried all the slots and am pressing very hard to make sure it's seated properly.

When I do get the memory to pass the startup tests it displays a screen showing the processor and memory volume for about 2 seconds before going into bios.
This is the big problem. No matter what settings I change in the bios I cannot get out of this one booting loop.
I cannot boot from the cd or floppy when the bios are set to boot from them. I cannot format my hard drive or install my OP. nothing.
Whatever I do on reset or startup I get taken into the bios.
Is there a way I can tell if my memory is bad?


Dragon+ Motherboard
512 Crucial DDR
GeForce Ti 200
Yamaha 24x CDRW
40GB WD hard drive
floppy

<b><font color=purple> Ain't no sunshine when she's gone. </font color=purple> </b>

 

[Zoron]

Sounds like bad RAM possibly... motherboard could also be defective. The only way to be sure is to try another mobo. Take it back where you purchased it to see if they will give you a new one, or talk to the manufacturer about a replacement.

<font color=red> If you design software that is fool-proof, only a fool will want to use it. </font color=red>