Posts by Catweazle

Which cable? Power cable or data cable? If it's an older floppy drive, ditch it in the bin and bung a new one is is the best way. They don't cost much at all!

But before you do that, be sure that you haven't had the power connector attached in a way that you 'missed' a pin and had the thing connected to 3 pins instead of 4. that'd kick it in the guts and make it lay down crying! :D

OK, let's REALLY go back to 1, eh? Disconnect EVERYTHING FROM EVERYWHERE!

Reset CMOS.

Grab the main power cable from the power supply unit and attach the ATX connector to the motherboard.

Make sure the power supply fan is connected to the correct socket on the motherboard.

Bung in a RAM module, in memory slot 1

Connect up the power switch, power LED, Reset and speaker cables from the front case panel.

Connect the monitor and keyboard, fit the power cord, and turn it on. MAKE SURE NOTHING ELSE WHATSOEVER IS ATTACHED TO ANYTHING.

If you've attached everything correctly, and you don't get a display showing the machine doing its self tests and ending up sitting there confused because there's no drives attached, then something's dramatically wrong! Try it again, this time fitting the display card and connecting the monitor to that instead. If that doesn't start either, then scream!

What processor have you got fitted to that motherboard? What make, model number and speed of RAM module are you using? If both those are fine with the motherboard itself, then you can start assuming that either motherboard, processor, or RAM module is stuffed.

Disconnect the hard drive. Disconnect the USB cables. Strip it right back to the bare bones system I described earlier. Don't even have molex power connectors attached to drives etc.

It's no use connecting anything up until you actually get the motherboard to complete it's Power On Self Test.

Hi again, Squirty. I've just reread all this through again and I'm wondering. Are you sure that you are clearing CMOS memory correctly? You'll recall that I instructed you to do so on page 2 of this topic.

If all seems that it is connected correctly, power down, remove the (big) power supply connector from the motherboard, and follow the instructions on page 7 of your motherboard manual to reset CMOS.

You also need to ensure that you troubleshoot using a barebones system, as described earlier. Even bad power connection to a drive which doesn't have it's data cable connected can pull things to a halt, or alternatively having a dodgy drive hooked up.

You really need to ensure that CMOS memory has been cleared, and that the system is not trying to start up with settings from a previous configuration.

Then either that board is stuffed or else you've still not actually got the connectors correctly hooked up. Seems unusual though to have the procesor fan spinning if the motherboard isn't working. Only system I've seen which displayed the symptoms you describe had a stuffed motherboard.

Got one in that tower you mentioned? The motherboard you're trying to get working has AGP 3.0, so you won't do any damage to even the most recent of display cards by popping it in to test the thing out ;)

Got a friend who'll let you borrow a card for a quick check?

There should be nothing in the BIOS settings or motherboard jumpers which would completely disable the onboard video, (I've checked) so you can rule that out I reckon.

Sorta leaves only stuffed onboard video, stuffed BIOS or stuffed motherboard, doesn't it? If the thing runs fine with an AGP card fitted, then good and well.

Bung an AGP card in it (temporarily if need be) and see if you get a display with that.

You still using the onboard video? Check that the monitor cable is firmly attached. It could be loose. Checkl that the monitor cable is in good order. It could be broken.

Using an add-in card now? Check that it's firmly inserted in its slot.

No.

This sentence is waffle used to fill up space, included purely becuase there is a 10 character minimum limit set for posts on DaniWeb!

I sincerely hope you are disconnecting the power from that motherboard before making any changes whatsoever.

Switch off, disconnect the power lead or turn off the mains switch, make changes, turn it back on.

Even with the system shut doewn, there is still power in the motherboard, and changing things can blow the thing up!

Yes, that helps. On the back of that connector plug you should see the metal clips where the wires are clipped in to the plug. Get a pin, depress the clip and pull the wire out of one side of the plug. Push it back in to the middle hole. Your motherboard requires the two wires to be on adjacent pins. You can work out for yourself which way round it needs to go (obviously if it doesn't work try the wires the other way round.) That bit about the connectors needing to face the same way should be a useful starting point for determining which wire to move.

Edit: You've obviously got the connectors reversed :D

Floppy drive cable connector is upside down for starters - reverse it.

Try reversing the power led connector and see what happens .

The front panel connector pins are probably the biggest source of headaches for home-builders :D

I DID just say that standards don't seem to be adhered to by case manufacturers ;)

Colour schemes vary from case to case. I don't believe there are any set standards, and if so they are not adhered to. But nevertheless, white wires are usually power, not ground.

Try having the connectors in one direction, and if it doesn't boot them reverse them all ;)

Front panel connectors (the ones coming from the case) generally have a flat face, and a face where you can see the clips where the pins on the ends of the wires have been pushed into the plug. All of the connectors should face the same way if the leads are correctly attached, on any motherboard I've ever seen ;)

If the board you refer to is this one, then the connectors I refer to are the ones for Power button, Power LED, Reset, HDD LED, and speaker, which are mentioned on page 16 of the manual. The plugs for all of those should face the same direction.

You need the CPU fan attached, of course, but I'd not bother with headers for USB, Wake on LAN, Infrared, or whatever else you may have until after you actually get the board to POST.

My strong suspicion is that you have the front panel connectors incorrectly attached.

Your motherboard manual should have diagrams.

You'll find that the most common source of the problem when a system inexplicably fails to power up id the Power LED connector being reversed. In fact, it's quite crucial to have the front panel connectors correctly attached, as the various wires on the connectors have specific purposes. All connectors should be facing the same direction.

Reset CMOS.

Have CPU with Heatsink/fan, One RAM module, and the vid card fitted. Check, recheck and double check the front panel connectors. Nothing else fitted or connected to the motherboard at all. That's a 'bare-bones' configuration. (If the motherboard has onboard video, use that rather than an add-in card.

Hook up the keyboard and monitor, power up, see if it POSTs. If not, check the front panel connectors again. You might even have a connector (such as Power LED) reversed on the board, stopping it from POSTing.

That lead and connector is coming from the power supply unit, not from a fan, isn't it? Tuck the thing away somewhere out of the way and forget about it, unless there is a relevent socket on your motherboard for it. (What make/model motherboard do you have, by the way).

Some motherboards make use of the connector to supply extra power for fans, etc. Some don't. If you don't need it then don't use it :)

Sooner the better. It's 1.30 am here and I'm hanging to get to bed :D

What sort of connector? Molex, 3 pin, what? Has the case you have got a front or rear fan controller? A monitor panel? Bit hard to answer your question, I think, as that wiring does not follow any standard scheme.

Catweazle, if the red (fiber) washer is on the top side of the mobo, under the screw head, how can it ground properly?

good point! If it doesn't power up, best to remove those washers, eh?

Coming from WHAT fan?

Most fans are either two wire (red/black) or 3 wire (red/yellow/black). The yellow wire is used to monitor fanspeed. Can't help you until I know where that fan is located, I'm afraid.

Another point. Use the commonsense approach to connecting and testing. Initial;ly, have only the cpu and heatsink/fan, front panel connectors, power unit cable, video card, one RAM module, monitor and keyboard connected up. Make sure that BIOS completes its POST test. Then add/connect other components one by one, to make sure all is working. If you connect everything at once, and it doesn't work, you can spend ages of trial and error to find the problem ;)

Careful initially can avoid headaches later!

The most important thing is ensuring you haven't dropped any screws 'n' such down in there and screwed the motherboard down on top of them :)

Hey! I said that on MSN.. How'd it get here?

He's quite right, Squirty. I'm probably an overly cautious person. Use commonsense, make sure that you don't damage the circuit board, and all should be well :D

I'm talking about using those 'red washers' between the motherboard and the standoff. Only if the standoff is a metal one though. It's not mandatory to do so, but it's a sensible thing to do.

On the topside of your motherboard, around the mounting holes, you may find there's a metal 'ring', which the screw head touches when it's screwed down. That should be no problems, as the board will 'ground' to the chassis through the screw.

Simply make sure that you don't allow any screw to overlap any electronic 'tracks' on the motherboard, and all should be well. (That's the reason I like to ensure that the underside is protected.)

How can you get fibre washers to stay in place on the metal standoffs while putting the motherboard in place? Glue them on?

Maybe I haven't seen enough motherboards, but all of them I've seen have large bonded surfaces, larger than any screw head would ever be.

But that does bring up another point, if the mounting holes are bonded, using a non-metal washer would prevent the board from being grounded properly.

I always use screws that have a head that looks like it has a washer, but it's actually all one piece.

You fit the motherboard very carefully! :D

Angle it as you put the thing in place, and don't let it come down onto the stand-offs until the rear connectors are in place in the backplate. Hold a bit of presure back on the spring-clips of the rear panel while you're bringing the mobo down onto the standoffs. When you get it in place hold it there and insert one or two screws and tighten them. With luck, you'll only have moved the washers a tiny bit, and you can work them back into place by using a pointed tool (or smalls jewellers screwdriver) down through the screwhole.

Grounding should not be a problem. If you use the correct screws, you'll notice that the motherboard is grounded from the screwhead to the case chassis.

Oh! Good question!

My thoughts are that you should NEVER use metal washers of any form when fitting a motherboard.

If you are using a case which has metal 'stand-offs', I'd advise that you religiously use fibre washers between the stand-off and the underside of the motherboard.

Also be careful that you use screws that don't have large heads for locations where the circuitboard tracks come realy close to the mounting hole.

Hi Raguel3, and welcome :)

There are boot files on drive C: which are necessary. Formatting the partition will remove them of course, but you can still use the space on the drive. Perhaps the most straighforward way to approach the situation is to use a partition management tool to 'shrink' the C: partition and merge the reclaimed space into your D: partition.

PCIE and PCI-X are most definitely, certainly NOT the same thing!

PCI is familiar to everybody. It's the slot standard which replaced the old, and now virtually disused ISA slot standard. PCI-X is an extended version of that slot format. This image illustrates PCI and PCI-X slots:

[img]http://www.costronic.com.tw/09p35I.JPG[/img]

The AGP slot format has more recently been added for use with display cards. The PCI and AGP slots use different buses for communication:

[img]http://www.guiadohardware.net/tutoriais/052/sv78o79c.jpg[/img]

The most recent standard, PCI-E is a bifferent slot format and bus standard altogether. It comes in a number of different configurations, and slot sizes. All of the PCI-E slots use the same PCI-E bus, but different slot sizes use more or less of the bandwidth available. This picture illustrates a motherboard with two legacy PCI slots (using a different bus) at right, a PCI-E x1 slot beside them (for a PCI-E add-in card) and a PCI-E x16 slot (for PCI-E display card).

[img]http://article.pchome.net/2003/09/18/9-23-6.jpg[/img]

1. Check you didn't switch them and connect to the wrong sockets.

2. Try using a different keyboard and mouse.

Locate the forum section which suits your question. (This one in your case.) Bring up the forum section index page, where the list of topics appears.

Locate the 'New Thread' button and click on it. Give your topic a descriptive title, type your question in and then click on the 'Submit' button underneath the text entry box when you're happy with what you're posting/

That's about it :D

If it works for you mate, then go right ahead. I'll simply say this:

* The PS/2 socket is not designed to be hot-swappable.
* I've had many a system handed to me to troubleshoot, and found the telltale scorchmarks on the top of the PS/2 socket when I've opened them up - every one of those caused by what I described above.

If it's a PS/2 mouse, then unplugging/replugging it as described, with the system powered up, could well be what's caused the problem. You should NEVER connect or disconnect a PS/2 mouse with power to the motherboard, because the socket is liable to 'blow' and the motherboard rendered useless for a PS/2 mouse. Same goes for a PS/2 keyboard!

Actually, Nemesis indicated that restoring a drive image from a previous date corrected the problem, so it must have been a software cause. It's impossible, of course, to say what specifically would have caused it but I'd suspect that it would have been malware of some variety, and most likely one which included a 'keylogger' component. Improve the internet security software installed on the system would be my advice.

DMR, you need to practice up on your Windozing skills, I suspect. I've not had to use a '3-fingered salute' for ages! :p Or perhaps I could be excused for suggesting you need this keyboard?

http://www2.corepower.com:8080/~dlehn/images/keyboard.jpg

****Warning : that link is not for the overly prudish members of our community! *****

I've already said, mate, that dual-channel for Athlon XP is not worth considering. It's only benefit to onboard NVidia graphics. If you think you've had better performance from dual-channel on an Athlon XP system you've been conned ;)

Forget about it. More RAM is much better.

(By the way, that Sempron 2400+ is basically an Athlon XP with different settings and less cache. Only the Sempron 3100+ on Socket 754 motherboards has a new architecture. Your one uses a modified Thoroughbred core.

Hi,

Grab that extra RAM mate. Dual channel memory configuration brings stuff-all benefit for that processor platform unless you are using onboard video, and with your rendering I'm sure you're not doing THAT!.

The extra RAM will bring you more benefit than any other change you've mentioned.

I wouldn't be so confident that the XP2500+ would hit 2.2GHz. 2500+ chips manufactured recently have had the clock multiplier 'super-locked', and have not necessarily overclocked as easily as earlier examples. I've come across quite a few that struggle to run with stability at more than 100MHz above stock settings. If your Sempron is comfortably running at the settings you mention, then I'd suggest you simply add the extra RAM and be happy with it until you can afford a better upgrade later on.

Option one:

Get a new keyboard.

Option two:

Hire someone else to do your typing.

Depending upon whether or not your keyboard is borked, one of those options would be the suitable one to follow.

I think this is a very genuine problem, both for Dani and for Forum readers. There's more than side panel ads to consider, because smaller links show up in various places as well. The one mentioned here, No-Adware, is reported to generate its own blasted nuisance popups, and that's certainly not a good thing when it emanates from software purported to get RID of such stuff.

No, I don't think you're being too money-hungry Dani, you're merely confronting the reality of keeping the site going.

But it certainly IS an indication that other methods of financing the site need to be continually pursued. This is a site which offers assistance to people in need, and advertising DOES have an impact. And let's face it, if people obtain products from advertisments on this site which cause problems for them rather than fixing their problems, then that will send out a 'message' of its own, and in the long run do just as much harm as turning away advertisers.

I have certainly noticed lately that an increasing amount of 'Spyware' product advertisements appear. We most certainly can't afford to have those advertisements generating problems on people's PCs rather than leading to a solution for them.

http://www.wellesley.edu/Computing/ResNet/P2P/limewire.html

File sharing is bad, mmkayy?

And bad file sharing software is REALLY bad!

Good idea. Make sure you enable the options for fixing file errors and surface checking before beginning the scan!

Do you understand how to access 'BIOS setup' on your system?

Have a hunt arount in there and locate the entry for 'Printer Port'. You should have various settings available, and it's be best to try some others. You need a 'duplex' setting for that printer/fax/scanner, so if the port is set to 'LPT' then it won't work properly.

I'm not sure which setting will be the best to use on your particular system and for that particular machine, but it'll be one of these:

ECP
EPP
EPP plus ECP

Try this:

* Uninstall the printer/fax/scanner by right-clicking its entry in the Control panel applet and choosing 'Delete', and also uninstalling any driver software from 'Add/Remove Programs.
* Make a change to the setting in BIOS setup
* Reboot and let the printer port be redetected and reinstalled
* Reinstall the printer/fax/scanner and see if it works.

Repeat that procedure for the other available settings in BIOS setup, and you should find the best one for your combination of equipment. A similar problem used to occur for many people who used parallel printers and scanners hooked up in a 'daisy-chain' configuration, and I see quite a likelihood that this is also the problem with your equipment.

"How do I do that BIOS Setup thing?"

A couple of points to consider.

Firstly there's the drive itself. If you've reset CMOS or made BIOS Setup changes at some point, it may not be configured adequately in BIOS to work at full efficiency. Ensure that all IDE settings are set to 'Auto' to ensure good performance. You should also check in Windows to ensure that the drive is using 'DMA' or it will not be functioning with full efficiency. Sometimes drives get confused about DMA in Windows, and there are Knowledge Base articles addressing various situations and problems in this regard.

Secondly, that problem of slow startup may not actually be the drive itself. Your PC is networked, and network connections, unless configured correctly, can cause significant delays at boot time. I'm no networking 'expert' I'm afraid, so I can't offer specific advice about that aspect, but I am aware that most such problems occur when related BIOS options are fiddled with or when Networking is manually configured rather than configured automatically by the OS. A discussion in the 'Networking' section might identify any such problems you may have.

Try these for starters:

http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;325487

http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;832161

Oh dear! Good thing that replacements are quite inexpensive nowadays.

Right click 'My Computer' and choose Properties. On the Hardware tab, select 'Device Manager'. Locate the entry for the drive in question, right click on it and choose 'Uninstall'.

Reboot and let the drive be redetected and reinstalled. Report back and let us know if it gets recognised correctly please.

I'll move this to 'Windows Software', as it has to do with software programs rather than Windows itself. Great answer, by the way, JC7 :)

Agreed. I'd personally consider 256Mb as a bare minimum for Windows XP, and with only that amount installed the dependence on your hard drive would certainly lead to fragmentation and performance drop.

Cleaning the system of spyware and nasties, getting rid of unused or unnecessary installed software, cleaning out temp files and other rubbish, and defragging the hard drive are all things to cosider to restore the responsiveness of your system. It gets cluttered and bogged down over time.

A format and fresh install is the best way to maximise the benefit, of course, but it's impact will be lessened if you simply load the rubbish back onto it.

You do need, of course, to be sure you load the latest motherboard and other component drivers after you install windows.

OK, Right-click 'My Computer' and select 'Properties'. In 'Device manager, find the entry for the monitor, right-click it and choose 'Uninstall' or 'Remove' or whatever the option is.

Then reboot, and see if the monitor is detected correctly. As it's currently set the way it is, you're unable to use display resolutions that are not appropriate to such a device.