Asus K8N-E Deluxe won't boot

hello all,

please help i'm at my wits end! Last week i bought myself a nice new system, it is:

- Asus K8N-E Deluxe Motherboard
- ATI X700 256MB g/card
- Crucial 256MB value RAM
- 80gig Hitachi HDD
- Optorite DVD+R re-writer

Basically, it won't work! I followed all the instruction to the letter in the manuals on how to put it all together, even though i've built before (best to be on the same side...er, even though it doesn't work!) When i first switched on i had my copy of Windows XP Professional inside...wouldn't recognise it (keeps coming up with "please insert boot device or restart computer"). I thought this was odd, so after fiddling and tweeking and trying over and over again, it still didn't work. So (and i know this is bad!) i installed it on a friends computer on to my HDD, put the HDD back in to my beast and tried booting from HDD. Still no good, however atleast now i get a windows message saying "start windows in safe mode/start in normally" etc. So when i saw this i was really happy! But then when i select any of the available options the system simply restarts, it just won't go in to windows AT ALL! I've been trying for over a week now, every day for hours (i'm a student, nothing else to do lol) and still no good, i've taken it all apart and put it back together again twice, i've reset my CMOS, i've fiddled with my BIOS, changed and replaced jumpers on both the motherboard and HDD and DVD drive, i've banged my head on walls, lost sleep and got square eyes just staring at it! Please please pleeeeeeease help!!! any suggestions would be so very much appreciated!

 

is your psu powerful enuff if so do u have the voltage set corrct?

 

yeh i've got a 350W psu and i've checked the voltage and all seems to be ok there

 

thinking about it....could 350W be too low?!

 

depends what cpu you have and the quality of the psu,unless its an antec or enermax,yeh its probably too low---But----I dont think thats your problem.

To clear things up you installed xp on your friends computer "as you said bad idea",what you should of done is format the drive on his computer,then install xp on yours,the harddrive has all his drivers and config files loaded it aint gonna work.

you need to reinstall xp now on your computer,so check your bios,make sure it can see your harddrive and cdrom,set first boot device to cdrom and all the others to disable including boot other device and reinstall xp

 

cheers guys, but its still not working!! i can't seem to get the computer to read the windows disk, it's just says to insert a boot disk and reset, even though i select the cd rom/DVD drive as the boot device :S so i can't even use my computer to format the HDD! Thanks anyway, i've ordered a new 500w psu so hopefully, HOPEFULLY that should clear things up, otherwise i fear it may be the motherboard, which means sending it back to ebuyer lol oh well

 

Theres only a few things that can be stopping you from loading windows,your cd drive is not being detected by your motherboard so check standard cmos properties in bios to see if its there,your windows disk isnt bootable but if you have used it to load xp already its is,sometimes your motherboard can be picky about what it see's as a first boot device,remove everything but the cdrom your loading windows with "in my experience an older drive often works better",connect it to the end "master" of the ide cable,check the jumper on the back to make sure its set to master,make sure its also in ide '0' on the motherboard if your using a sata drive

If your using an ide harddrive try switching the cdrom and harddrive ide channels over,if you still dont get any joy,try another cdrom or borrow one of a friend,ideally the one you used to install it on his computer as you know it has no probs detecting windows

 

some good ideas there, i'll try them all, thanks very much! sorry it's taking so long to get back to you all the time, I live a few miles away from my nearest internet connection Also, my shiny new 500W psu came today, no joy with that though, but atleast now i know i have ample power for the future.

By the way, yeh i'm using standard IDE drive (sadly no SATA)

Do you think that maybe it could be a problem with the motherboard as i'm seriously thinking about sending it back, but obviously i'd rather not. I mean, if it's detecting the drives and everything and getting as far as it is, can there still be a problem there, or could it even be a processor problem?

I noted this morning that when i select to start windows normally, the HDD start to make a sound like it's just about to boot, and then everything reboots. Has this got any importance to anything? I think it's also detecting system 32 and all that because when i try booting in safe mode it comes up with that screen filling text garble about system 32.

I think you could be on to something with it being a new DVD drive as it makes whiring noises and flashing lights happen, but then nothing seems to compute (excuse the pun!).

Once again, thanks for the advice, i'll get back to you later on how it's all going

 

i've just been chatting to my friend and he thought of something rather cunning! I installed the copy of windows on my friends computer, who is running a pentium 3...my computer is running an AMD64 3700+ could this have anything to do with it?

 

As I have already said pete

you may actually be damaging your hardware by trying to get windows to load with the install you did on your friends computer,I cant stress it enough DONT TRY TO GET WINDOWS TO WORK LIKE THAT AGAIN,IT WONT!,you need to do a fresh install,with the ideas I have outlined good luck m8!

 

PROBLEM SOOOOOOOOOLVED!! turns out it was the simplest of simple things...the sodding DVD drive :'( i realised that the only thing that was different and hadn't been shouted at so far was the DVD drive (because of course, it couldn't possibly be that...could it?!) and so i put my mates one in and it worked so so so well, not a problem, no glitches, nothing. The DVD drive then got a shouting at, such as "ha, you thought you could beat me but not" etc

Cheers for all your help though mate, i've learnt a lot regardless

 

N1 M8!