Comp

Hi everyone.
I am building my own computer for the first time and I am just checking that everything is how it is suppose to be. When I turn on my computer I get the Media test failure. Check cable. Which I assume is due to me not having an os installed or anything. I checked the BIOS and have see it does recognize my disc drive and I believe my Hard drive, the only reason I think my hard drive might not be recongnized is because it shows up as S... with a bunch of numbers instead of something like Seagate or the size or something. Anyways, the boot order is correct (Disc, Hard Drive, Ethernet, then floppy since there is no floppy. I just want to make sure that this message is cause I have no OS and not something like the drive is bad or I hooked up a cable wrong. Thanks for your input.

 

It sounds like the HD is not being recognized properly. Is the BIOS set to auto detect the drive? If it is and it clearly isn't detecting it properly you may have to manually input the drive details.

The error you are getting is nothing to do with not having an OS by the way.

 

Well, so far it I have done a little more checking the in the BIOS since I'm not too familiar with it and found an area that states I have a HD and it shows 400GB and also an area where the HD Sata is detected as IDE and not raid or anything so that is right. I have been looking for where it states my video card which must be working if its displaying. The memory is displayed and the CPU. I don't see that anything is not detected or that any is detected wrong. I might try my linux boot disc and see if I can get it going with that. What do you think?

 

Put in your desired OS install disk, and install it as you wish. I typically put the OS on a separate partition (10gb for XP or Linux, 20gb for Vista) and create another partition for data. On linux you'll need a third partition for the swap. Let us know how things worked out.

 

Well the problem is I don't have the OS yet. ... Gotta get some more money before I get that but I do have a linux CD around here somewhere but I can't seem to find it. Perfect right? Anyways, do you happen to know what error you get when you don't have an OS installed?

 

It should be something like "no boot device found" or "Install Operating System and Reboot".
Maybe someone can give a more exact message.

I'm not a hardware guy but I'm curious if you unplug the CD/DVD drive and turn on the computer do you still get media test failure?