New To Pc Building

jessy

Hello all

This is my first go at building a full PC from scratch. i have experience of upgrading all of the major components before so im not a complete beginner. All the parts that i bought are compatible.

I am using the 80gb Hd from my old pc, which is partitioned in 2 with winXP home and SuSe Linux on the other side.

CdRw and floppy are also be used from old comp.

New parts are 400w power supply
64bit AMDXp 3000
512mb Ram 400Mhz
MIS M/B (it dose support all hardware im using)
GC 128mb Radeon 9200
Clear Plastic Case.


Problem is when i boot the machine it will only stay on from a few seconds. it doesn’t recognise the HD(it tells me this from the POST)
sometimes it will get as far as Grub and let me start to boot in to winXP but then it shuts down(dose not always get this far).

if anyone has any ideas of what is wrong please help

Jim

Gaz

Does it just shutdown as if the power is being cut ? Try booting it up out of the case , ie: motherboard on a static bag , could be the case shorting it out , had a similar problem a few years back, i just put some rubber feet (not sure what there actually called , between the board and case and it was ok.

VeVeX

Firstly i'd check the seating of componants including the HSF.

Did you reinstall XP? If not you will have to when changing that much hardware. XP sets up hardware profiles for your hardware so they wont be talkin right.

vibe666

it's likely to be a temperature problem if it's doing it like that. see if you can get into the bios to check temps before it shuts down and see what they are like.

i did have a similar problem before with a new build, but it turned out to be the PSU not giving out enough juice. have you tried removing all but the essential parts? just keep the HD, and video and remove anything else that might be drawing power. if it's a cheap PSU it might be the problem, but I'm stillleaning towards it being temps.

try booting with no HD and have a good poke around in the BIOS and see if it runs any more stably. also if you're putting in more than one stick of ram remove the extra's just in case it's that.

start with the most basic setup you can and add things one at a time till it falls over and you'll most likely find the problem.

let us know how you go.

Col_Loki

If its just in the middle of loading and then just power's off then id go with the case shorting or dodgy PSU (what brand is it btw? Doubt its an issue with a low power GFX card but curious).

If its giving you a blue screen then Ram most lightly.

Alot of beeps like a siren then cooling .......... check your heat sink and fan to make sure its spinning and fitted correctly. Check the bios for temps just after a restart , i doubt this is the issue (unless a cable is stopping the fan etc)

You mite also want to check your hard drive jumpers if you have more that one (ie master and slave setting - IDE drives) and make sure the end of the cable is connected to the master drive, slave middle .

Dr Bolouswki

I had the exact same problem and it turned out to be the contacts on the sound card? Might be that giving all the contacts on PCI cards a good clean with some recommended cleaning swabs (a mate gave me acetone based swabs) may be of some help...

Another way to test is to start the boot with as many items NOT included as possible ie with just memory, vid card and cpu first, then add other items one by one, see if you get any further, and then you should be able to narrow down what component is causing it to flip out...

TacT

Have you installed feet on the case? I just built one of these myself and didn't have any problems like this with it at all, worked perfectly with components removed from another case, a successful transplant

I'm guessing your components might not be properly seated, did you tighten up the case screws well when you put it together (obvious but..)? Moving it around will loosen them very easily, even from where you built it to it's resting place, they're much more delicate than the average case unfortunately.