New Computer - Interesting Problem

Ok, I just got all the parts for my new computer and put it all together and turned it on and the mobo screen showed up and worked fine. I went into bios and saved and exited with out changing anything and restarted and then it started up but nothing showed up on the monitor. So then I reset the cmos in the off chance that i somehow messed something up. But still nothing happened. Then i tried swapping the video cards (using sli). Then it did turn on. After another restart it did not work. Then i turned off sli and tried each card seperately. They both worked and did not work at what seemed random. Then i retried it with sli enabled and it did work and i began to set up the raid array and and to install xp. After it loaded i realized i forgot the serial ata raid driver. So after a restart to get that in it did work then when i went to install windows but all the hard drives were seperate and not in the raid array. So i restarted to try again but i can not said the raid array to boot. and that is the point where i am at now. Oh, i also thought the randomness of working and not working might be a power issue so i rearranged the power supply a few times but it had the same results. Any help appreciated

This is everything,

1 MSI P6N SLI Platinum LGA 775 NVIDIA nForce 650i SLI ATX Intel Motherboard - Retail
4 Seagate Barracuda 7200.10 ST3320620AS (Perpendicular Recording Technology) 320GB 7200 RPM SATA 3.0Gb/s Hard Drive - OEM
2 EVGA 768-P2-N831-AR GeForce 8800GTX 768MB GDDR3 PCI Express x16 HDCP Video Card - Retail
1 Intel Core 2 Duo E6700 Conroe 2.66GHz LGA 775 Processor Model BX80557E6700 - Retail
1 COOLER MASTER Stacker 830 Evolution RC-830-KKN2-GP Black Aluminum ATX Full Tower Computer Case - Retail
1 Thermaltake W0106RU Complies with ATX 12V 2.2 & EPS 12V version 700W Power Supply - Retail
1 bluegears b-Enspirer 7.1 Channels PCI Interface Sound Card - Retail
1 ASUS Arctic Square 92mm Vapo Bearing CPU Cooler - Retail
1 NEC Black 1.44MB 3.5" Internal Floppy Drive - OEM
1 Logitech 967738-0403 Black USB Standard Deluxe 250 Keyboard - OEM
1 Logitech SBF-96 Black 3 Buttons 1 x Wheel PS/2 Wired Optical Mouse - OEM
1 Sony NEC Optiarc 18X DVD±R DVD Burner, OEM Version Black SATA Model AWG170S-B2 - OEM
6 Scythe S-FLEX SFF21D 120mm Case Fan - Retail
1 Logitech 980240-0403 Black 3.5mm Connector Desktop Microphone - Retail
2 G.SKILL 2GB (2 x 1GB) 240-Pin DDR2 SDRAM DDR2 800 (PC2 6400) Dual Channel Kit Desktop Memory Model F2-6400PHU2-2GBHZ - Retail

 

Trying to follow the problem(s) which you have described gives me the impression that there is probably more than one issue to resolve.

You say that you have assembeld the new pc completely but in that configuration problem solving is virtually impossible.

You need to find out that the bare components are working without issues or conflict. To that end you need to go for a bare bones set up ie mobo, cpu/(hsf), ram (one stick only), vga, psu and a floppy so you can boot to DOS (the floppy not necessary strictly). At this stage I would also suggest using PS/2 KB and mouse instead of the usb which you have.

If your pc seems to work properly in this set up then the next step will be to configure the bios in respect of the HDD and the raid array. The raid array will require 2 elements 1. the bios to be correctly set up and 2. for the correct drivers to be presented to XP when it installs.

Good Luck