Asrock etc - all new, don't work!

I have recently upgraded my PC by installing a new mobo( Asrock N69C-S), a new CPU (AMD X2) and extra memory. I find it impossible to get the system working'
When I switch on I get a flash screen with a number of options including F2- BIOS setup, F11 BOOT menu, F6 -Flash, When I hit either F2 or Fll to set up boot sequence, both HDD and CD Rom drives are marked as DISABLED with the folowing message."A device enclosed in parenthesis has been disabled in the corresponding type menu!"
From this point I am when I close the dialogue I have a blank screen.
I have checked integrity of all connections which seem to be OK. I have the AMD installation disk but it is not read by the system
"HELP" "MAYDAY" "AU SECOURS"

 

Asrock doesn't have the N69C-S mobo listed, check the model # again please.

 

Sorry, slip of the finger, should read: N68C-GS UCC. Hope that makes more sense!

 

Have you tried booting with an Operating System XP/Win7 disc etc. Put your disk in and reboot. Is your Hard Drive set to 'MASTER' on the jumper settings. Have you tried another Hard Drive, ???

 

Thanks for your reply. My Hard Drive is SATA and connected to SATA no.1, so have no Master/slave settings. connection point. AS both my HDD and CD/DVD drive are "disabled" I cannot load an OS disk.
Whilst these drives are "Disabled" their full details are shown on the BIOS set up but in parentheses.
I have just disconnected SATA and tried an old but working IDE drive and this also shows details on setup and as "Disabled" again so impossible to load an OS.

 

Hi again ... Regardless of what your BIOS says , Have you tried with an OS Disk on boot, what I am trying to get at is maybe just maybe the com will read from the disk then once installed you can adjust BIOS Later. Try with your Sata and if no joy try the Eide. Also I forgot to mention yesterday I see from your Asus specs/Manual that pressing ''DELETE'' will also take you to the Bios, have you tried that??

 

Incidentally are you using a USB Keyboard as that could be why you cannot access Bios as you are not booting far enough for the KeyBoard to kick in or needs enabling in the Bios. Try a PS wired one.

 

Hi Toke,

I will take up your suggestions tomorrow, I'm using my 2nd PC at the moment and got a complex report to finish so I'll take it of line and swap PCs tomorrow and I will let you know what happens. Thanks for your advice. I usually connect Bournemouth with sunshine and sand but looks like it's snow and ice right now!

 

Thanks to your help and suggestions, after a lot of swearing and great shuffling of HDDs and CDs, finally got it up and running and just about to try and reload all my software and hardware but, at least, I'm on line again.
I tried loading the OS which I previously had loaded, on your suggestion on the IDE HDD and it got most of the way through loading then stopped with "failed D:\I386\asms, cyclic redundancy check". tried the same with the SATA drive and got same thing.
A also tried loading a new XP Pro installation with SP 2 but this didn't work either.
In desparation I dug an old XP OS which came with an elderly laptop. I am now running on an old version of XP Home which rather limits what I can do and I'm not keen on Windows 7. Any ideas where I can get a cheap XP Pro SP2 or 3 ?
Thanks again for your help - hope the weather improves!

 

So we have some progress, a duff disk. Depending on where you live there are plenty of XP's on Ebay. What appears to happen to keep within the M$ law the seller gives you a small peice of the original computer hardware
Thus making the disk you recieve Genuine from a computer that is now decommisioned,

 

I had tons of issues(whatever OS) when I had a mix of IDE and SATAs on an ASUS A8N-E. My machine could not do what I asked it to. I finally got rid of the IDE, solved everything except for my curiousity.:confused

 

Based on my experiences, I smell an issue with incompatible memory.

Between my time selling computer memory at retail and the dozens (hundreds?) of PCs I've built or upgraded, this has been the most common pain in the a** I've run into.

In theory, if a board takes (for example) a 1GB DDR3200 in each slot, any brand of 1GB DDR3200 should work. In reality, this is often far from the truth.

Just because a given stick of memory worked perfectly on boards a and b does not guarantee it will work on board c. Some mobos are especially picky: I'm currently playing with a low end AM2+ Biostar that only booted with my third try of DDR2.

Check ASRock's approved memory list for ideas, or buy a stick of a different brand from a store that allows a return (no restock fee) if the new memory doesn't play nice with the board.

My advice on picky mobos is to stay away from "gaming" memory. Generally (but not always) if you can't find an exact model on the approved vendor's list, I've found either Kingston Value Ram or A-Data to be a good choice. You can also check the mobo's user reviews on sites such as Newegg, TigerDirect and Amazon to get ideas on what memory works (or doesn't work) with your board.

Hope this helps.

 

I live in Central France so difficult to get english software so I'll have a look at ebay and local expat websites. I heven't yet tried running a cleaning disk thru the DVD RW and will search one out and do so this morning.
Thanks and a Merry Christmas.

www.leschenauds.com

 

Further along the line now all up and working on XP Home. I managed to get a XP Pro SP2 disc unused from a PC shop at a reasonable price but cannot get it to load.
My system now has 2 HDD, one SATA 500G and one IDE 40G. When I installed the XP Home on the SATA Disk, I didn't ask for a partition but the SATA drive was split to Local Drive C/: at about 10 Mb and Logical Drive D:/ with 490 odd Gb. It looks like a small part of the system files are on the C: Drive and the larger part on tge D:drive.
When I tried to Install XP Pro I got a message that not enough room on the disk. I installed a Partition Manager and increased C: to about 2 Gb and reduced D: to just above 450Gb.
When I try to install XP Pro now I get : Stop C0000221 Unknown Hard error
\SystemRoot\System32\NTDll.dll.

Unless I can work around this problem, I would like to do is remove everthing from the SATA drive and start again, does that sound reasonable?

 

I would disconnect the IDE hard drive from your system then try to install the operating system on the SATA drive.
I don't know why but A LOT of newer motherboards have issues with IDE and SATA devices connected as augiedoggie mentioned. I have run into this my self on a lot of builds over the past couple years along with USB keyboards not being detected right away so one can't get into the BIOS. I keep a few PS2 connector keyboards around now just in case in fact I usually setup a system using one then put a USB one on after it's all set.

Sam

 

Thanks to your suggestions, I now have my PC up and running. I disconnected the SATA drive and eventually managed to load an OS onto the IDE drive. Not only was there an issue on my XP installation disk but there was a problem with the (new) DVD RW. So I changed it for an old one which I knew works. After loading the OS, I reconnected and formatted to SATA drive and transferred my backup info onto it. It has been a juggling act due to not just one issue but a number of them but the forum's support has been critical.
PROBLEM SOLVED!