Computer Assembly Problem

[Richard R. Graham]

I am attempting to assemble a TigerDirect bare bones kit consisting of
the following:

Soyo 10-bay mid tower case with 400 watt power supply,
Chaintech CT-7NJL6 socket A mother board
Athlon XP3000+ processor
Ultra 512 MB PC3299 DDR 400 MHz X2
XFX GeForce FX 5500 256 MB TV/DVI AGP video card
Creative Sound Blaster 24 bit audio card
DVD rw drive
CD rw drive
Western Digital eide 160 GB hd
western digital eide 20 GB HD
1.44 MB 3.5 in floppy

With memory, video card, and sound card plugged in the system boots,
completes the POST, and will display the BIOS setup. When I add a hard
drive and attempt to boot, the fans come on for about 5 or so seconds and
it switches off.
When I disconnect the hard drive and reattempt to boot, the fans come on
for about 5 seconds and it again switches off.
I got another power supply (550 watt) and the same thing happened.
I removed the mother board from the case, and again the same thing
happened. I swapped video cards and again the same.

I am afraid I am out of my depth!

Any assistance would be greatly appreciated.

Daunted Newbie

 

[John Doe]

I am attempting to assemble a TigerDirect bare bones kit
consisting of the following:
Soyo 10-bay mid tower case with 400 watt power supply,
Chaintech CT-7NJL6 socket A mother board
Athlon XP3000+ processor Ultra 512 MB PC3299 DDR 400 MHz X2
XFX GeForce FX 5500 256 MB TV/DVI AGP video card Creative
Sound Blaster 24 bit audio card DVD rw drive CD rw drive
Western Digital eide 160 GB hd western digital eide 20 GB
HD 1.44 MB 3.5 in floppy
With memory, video card, and sound card plugged in the system
boots, completes the POST, and will display the BIOS setup.
When I add a hard drive and attempt to boot, the fans come on
for about 5 or so seconds and it switches off. When I disconnect
the hard drive and reattempt to boot, the fans come on for about
5 seconds and it again switches off. I got another power supply
(550 watt) and the same thing happened. I removed the mother
board from the case,

Who told you to do that? Did they also tell you that placing the
mainboard on any conductive surface could destroy it when you
powered up?

One of the best ways to troubleshoot is to prevent compounding the
problem.

What case did you remove it from? If it is a common personal
computer case, there is no reason for you to remove the mainboard
from the case.

Have you tried removing the sound card? When problems arise,
remove everything except what is absolutely necessary to get to
the BIOS setup screen. And go from there.

Do you have an operating system on your hard disk drive?

Have you tried booting to a CD, after adjusting BIOS settings?






and again the same thing

 

[Ruel Smith]

I am attempting to assemble a TigerDirect bare bones kit consisting of
the following:

Soyo 10-bay mid tower case with 400 watt power supply,
Chaintech CT-7NJL6 socket A mother board
Athlon XP3000+ processor
Ultra 512 MB PC3299 DDR 400 MHz X2
XFX GeForce FX 5500 256 MB TV/DVI AGP video card
Creative Sound Blaster 24 bit audio card
DVD rw drive
CD rw drive
Western Digital eide 160 GB hd
western digital eide 20 GB HD
1.44 MB 3.5 in floppy

With memory, video card, and sound card plugged in the system boots,
completes the POST, and will display the BIOS setup. When I add a hard
drive and attempt to boot, the fans come on for about 5 or so seconds and
it switches off.
When I disconnect the hard drive and reattempt to boot, the fans come on
for about 5 seconds and it again switches off.
I got another power supply (550 watt) and the same thing happened.
I removed the mother board from the case, and again the same thing
happened. I swapped video cards and again the same.

I am afraid I am out of my depth!

Settle down...

Now, first off, apparently everything was fine until the HDD connection. Did
you check the HDD? Did you check the cable? Did you try another HDD?

If you put everything back together without the HDD, does it still post and
show the BIOS setup?

 

[BigJIm]

try setting up the 160 drive as the master do not connect the 20 gig.
make sure the memory is seated properly
no sound card until you check the bios and make sure the onboard sound is
disabled if it has it.

 

[Mike Hollywood]

Rich,

It's usually best to make the simplist system you can, and then add to it
once it's stable.
Because you got into cmos setup we know your stuff is working, or at least
was once.
I think the simplist setup using your stuff is:
the power supply
Mobo/CPU/fan combo (in the case or out), (if out, no metal under it)
one stick of memory ( I see you have a single stick of 512. Max PC
recommends
using 2 sticks of 256 to get to 512 because the system runs faster with two
sticks,
and my take on it is: two is better than one because if one fails you still
have one . Like
now for example, suppose your problems are being caused by your memeory, you
can't swap one out, etc. I always use two just for that.)
and the smaller hard drive set as a master, or as cable select.
Recall that if you use cable select the boot drive goes on the end
connector.

If that all works, then turn it off, add the cd burner.

Then decide which drive you want your operating system on and
proceed accordingly.

Good luck,

Mike

 

[Richard R. Graham]

Thank all of you for your helpful suggestions. The SoundBlaster audio card
seems to have been the offending agent. After removing it I was able to
add all the drives without difficulty, format the hard drive, and get XP
installed. I then added the sound card with no problems. Thanks very much
for the help.

Richard

 

[Mike Hollywood]

Hey Rich!
That's great. Good for you.
Mike