First Time Building Computer, and Windows won't install!

I know this is dedicated to buying pre-fab machines, but I didn't know where else to post so.....

This is my first attempt at building a computer.

I followed the instructions in the MSI motherboard manual to connect and insert everything so all things should be connected correctly. I did not change anything in the BIOS (except time and date), as it appeared that everything was detected correctly such as: correct processors and speed, RAM, IDE drives. However, I'm not very familiar with BIOS settings so I may have missed something crucial. When I get to the Windows setup screen, it loads up a bunch of stuff, and then will do one of two things after reaching "setup is starting Windows" and waiting a minute or two:
1)reboot
-or-
2)It will get to the next screen that allows you to format a partition, but when it finishes, it gives me the message that it was unable to do so because the disk may be damaged, not connected and turned on (I can feel the hard drive spinning), or something about needing something about SCSI (which the drive is not).

I noticed that when it does get to the next screen to format, the optical drive spins back up and begins to read the windows disc again. When it does not, the screen blanks, and then reboots.

I went back to Fry's and exchanged for the exact same hard drive and still get the rebooting problem. I've only tried a few times, but I haven't reached the format/partition screen again, yet. One of their tech guys that was in a hurry to leave told me it could also be my Windows disc, RAM, or motherboard. But I don't really have any spare parts to switch in and out as my old computer was so.....very.....old..... 333MHz K6-2 >.<

Specs are below:
(everything was bought new)
Case: Antec TX 640B w/ 400-watt Power Supply
Motherboard: MSI K8N SLI
CPU: AMD Athlon 64 3200+
Memory:1 GB Corsair Ram
Optical Drive: Emperex Dual Layer Dvd-burner (yes, some cheap brand)
Hard Drive: Hitachi 80GB 7200RPM Desktar Parallel ATA w/ 2MB Buffer
Graphics Card: 3D Fuzion 256MB 3800GT PCI-E
Sound Card: SoundBlaster X-FI (not yet installed)
OS: Windows XP Pro 32-bit

I would consider myself a novice-intermediate, but not quite a noob, so even the supposedly obvious things I may have missed. Any help would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks a lot for your help!

 

Thats not true.

Anyway...

The stage you are having troubles with are when it detects the BIOS type (ACPI/APIC, etc).
The next place it has a problem is reading the drive. If you replaced it, then its not the drive that has a problem.

I'd be more concerned its the motherboard that has the problem. At no time should a regular IDE controller give these kinds of problems, unless your drive is hooked to a IDE RAID controller.

 

Exactly what does the Bios report the drive as?

That would be the likely culprit, or the physical connection, seeing as you are on the second drive and getting the same error.

 

Make sure there's no conflict with the HDD & other drives, such as having jumpers set to "master" on both drives sharing an IDE cable. Sometimes, I've seen where only the "cable select" setting worked for certain mobo's...trying the master & slave jumpers gave problems.

 

I agree about cable select.

If it works it's great, but I'm very wary of it. Seen too many problems, even with hardware that is compatible.

 

Thanks so much for you help so far guys.

I forgot to mention that I am unsure whether my two IDE drives are connected correctly. So far, I have them connected to their own IDE port (hard drive to 1 and dvd-burner to 2) and both of them set to master. The cable that I use for the Hard Drive came with the motherboard has 3 connectors labled system, master, and slave. Does it really matter which order I connect them in? (I put system into the mother board, master into the drive, and slave to nothing).

Also, I noticed that once, when i forgot to plug in the hard drive, it would ALWAYS skip the reboot and go to the next screen and say there is no hard drive to select from.

As far as the detecting BIOS type, I have no idea what to do about that. The Bios reports the drive as "HDR- some long string of numbers and letter" and when I press enter on it, it shows that it has the correct size and only allows for auto-detect for the hard-drive.

Unfortunately, setting the cable select on the optical drive made the Hard Drive disappear.

I will continue rearranging the cables and jumpers and see what happens.

 

Alright, I am a big noob. Obviously, by connecting the hard drive and optical drive to the same cable, setting the optical drive to slave, all my woes have disappeared! Currently windows is now installing and hopefully everything else will run smoothly. Thanks for the help though!

 

The bad news is that you shouldn't mix optical (CD/DVD) drives and hard drives on the same cable/controller.

The good news is that you have narrowed it down somewhat, to being how you have installed it, or a faulty controller.

You should have hard drives on the Primary Controller in the correct Master/Slave heirachy.

Optical drives on the Secondary Controller in the correct Master/Slave heirachy.

 

Everything works fine now, I have installed all the drivers and the sound card as well.

Just for further reference, I'm not quite sure what you mean by mixing the optical drive and hard drives onto the same cable/controller. Is that what I'm doing now? I do have the hard drive as master and the optical as slave. As I mentioned before, previously, the optical drive was on its own cable as master connected to its own IDE port, but that caused a conflict or something and I was unable to get windows up and running.

BTW, when do you use cable select? and what is the standard way to connect the hard drive and optical drive to the motherboard?

Thanks so much for your help! People like you make the world a better place

 

That's what you think.


To answer your questions, don't use Cable Select if you can help it.

As far as having what where,

On the Primary Controller, hard drive/s only. If you have more than 1, then set them up as Master and Slave.

Optical drives on the Secondary Controller etc.

In other words, hard drives on their own controllers and cable, and optical on their own. (You have a hard drive and optical drive on the same cable)

Reason being is hard drives are MUCH faster than optical, and if you mix them, some controllers won't work or run as effeciently.


(I just had a beef kebab with chile and garlic sauce )