Problems With A Newly Built Pc

[hYbrid]

(Because I'm not entirely sure what the problem itself is the topic name is kind of vague, sorry.)

 

Alright so basically I upgraded my mom's computer with the following:

 

PC CHIPS M848A (V5.0) Socket A (Socket 462) SiS 746FX ATX AMD Motherboard

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?...N82E16813185074

 

AMD Duron 1.6 Applebred 1.6GHz Socket A Processor Model DHD1600DLV1C

(No longer listed on newegg)

 

eVGA 256-A8-N313-LX GeForce FX5500 256MB 128-bit DDR AGP 4X/8X Video Card

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?...N82E16814130197

 

Kingston ValueRAM 1GB (2 x 512MB) 184-Pin DDR SDRAM DDR 400 (PC 3200)

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?...N82E16820141423

 

She doesn't do a whole lot as far as computing so I was going for extreme budget here

 

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For the install everything went smoothly, I've built 2 other PC's before and I've never had any problems. Now for the problem itself, the computer seems to start up fine without any errors and normally where you would get the windows loading screen I get a black screen with a blinking underscore. My first guess was that maybe the hdd (Just a normal 80GB IDE HDD. I've tried getting it to run on another PC and I was able to get it work fine.) wasn't being detected but as far as I can tell it seems to be recognizing it. I've tried messing with the boot order and tinkering around with the BIOS a bit but I can't seem to fix it. I've looked at the comments for all the products, googled, and looked at various PC help forums but I can't seem to find anything. Any help is much appreciated

Edited December 22, 2006 by hYbrid

[WhenKittensATK]

You could try different ide cables even though it was working when you installed windows.

[hYbrid]

You could try different ide cables even though it was working when you installed windows.

 

Ah, well let me elaborate a bit. This was an upgrade so when I plugged the hdd in it had an existing install of XP on it. I was able to boot from the CD drive fine and do the first part of the windows XP repair(Yes I have a legit copy) but where it would normally restart and start the second phase of the repair(installing components, drivers, etc) it would restart fine and go to the black screen with the blinking underscore.

 

EDIT: After a bit more messing around with things I'm pretty sure it has to be a conflict with the BIOS/HDD. I would guess its probably auto-detecting it wrong or something of that nature. It has three different modes, LBA, BLK, and PIO. Turning off LBA gets it to change the blinking underscore part to "Unable to load operating system". I ran a repair after that and still nothing though.

Edited December 22, 2006 by hYbrid

[bigred]

it's an existing driver from the system XP was originally installed on.

 

 

I hesitate to say it, but put the drive back with the old hardware, fire it up and remove ALL of your chipset and drive controller drivers from device manager and add remove programs (if they're in there). you should be okay from that point.

[hYbrid]

it's an existing driver from the system XP was originally installed on.

I hesitate to say it, but put the drive back with the old hardware, fire it up and remove ALL of your chipset and drive controller drivers from device manager and add remove programs (if they're in there). you should be okay from that point.

 

Would a complete reformat work just as well? The old hardware may be FUBAR -_-. And how about the LBA/BLK/PIO settings? Just leave them at whatever the BIOS defaults to?

[bigred]

bios defaults, and yes a reformat would take care of it

[hYbrid]

bios defaults, and yes a reformat would take care of it

 

Worked fine after a reformat, guess the repair option is a no with a new motherboard. Thanks for the help man, appreciate it.

Edited December 23, 2006 by hYbrid

[gotdamojo06]

good luck