You've got good parts.

Is your old IDE drive still bootable? If so, I would still put the original hard drive back in and see if you system will boot and display video correctly with it. You don't have to take the new drive out of the case. Just set the old drive next to the case and attach the cables to it. Trying a different hard drive will help rule out SATA or Windows installation issues.

Do you have another monitor that you could try? Swapping a second monitor would rule out monitor problems.

I've had RAM go bad in a system that is working and stop it from booting up. If you have two sticks of RAM (like using two 512 to get a gig) try removing one stick and booting the computer. If that doesn't work, remove the existing stick and put the other stick in and try to boot it. Sometimes one stick will go bad.

You might try taking the video card our and cleaning the contacts will alcohol. Sometimes just removing and re-inserting the card will help clean the contacts and fix things.

Do you get any strange Beeps when you turn the computer on? If so, they are Power On Self Test (POST) codes and can help you diagnose hardware problems. If you get beeps that you haven't heard, look them up in your motherboard manual. They will probably be in a chapter called Troubleshooting.

If none of these things help at all... and if eVGA will replace your video card... I'd probably send it in to them for a replacement.

 

i just recieved my new computer on saturday (alienware) and i have dual sli in on pci expresslane 16x i have 2 nvidia 7800gtx cards,they own

 

All that power must be making up for your small.....monitor

J/K , sounds like you got a nice set up.

 

alright more info

the system hangs on post code 0.4. which seems to have to do with the video card not initializing. this code seems to come up when i use my dvi cable which i normally use. i put the rgb cable in and it works.

i took out all the ram and put one stick back in. hung on post code c3 which is where the compress bios goes to the dram. change that stick out hangs at same point. put in my last stick and it boots. and we have video on the rgb port. switch to the dvi port and still nothing.

i also went back to using the ide drive, instead of the sata drive.

so i would guess that the dvi port on my vc is dead somehow. 2 out of my 3 512mb ram sticks are shot. and my mb doesnt like sata even though it has 4 ports for it.

when i left the system was formating the ide drive again so we will see where its at when i get home

 

I assume you switched to the standard video cable after you swapped out the memory sticks?

Possibly you had a power spike or outage or brownout. Brownout is where the power stays on, but drops a bit... very hard on computers. I guess you didn't have a good power strip or UPS?

That's probably a good decision until things get sorted out.

I'm not sure all that is true.

Are you using a DVI adapter for the video card, or changing to a different DVI cable? Does your monitor have a DVI connector? Some LCD flat panels have two DVI connectors, try the second one if yours has two. Some monitors need to be changed in their "Setup" to see a DVI connection. Maybe you need to set that. I doubt this because it seems that you have been using DVI since you first built this system.

Some early SATA drives had compatibility issues. Some motherboard chipsets had SATA compatibility problems too. I'd leave the new SATA drive out of this until the other problems are sorted out. SATA does rock though. I have a 10k Raptor at home... very fast.

I thought the system came up on this drive and was running? Sometimes bad memory makes it look like the hard disk crashed. Kinda hard to keep track of all this through forum messages.

It seems like you're making progress though... that's good.

 

no no brown outs here lately
i thought so but the video card still goes out when the system trys to install.

the dvi is back now though
guess i had to boot with the cable connected.
i just bought this drive on sunday so i would doubt its a early model
no neither drive has any os on them. they were both in the process of being formated and installed on when all of the problems started

 

hmm wonder if i should try to format my hd in heathers computer here and install window on it from this comp.
then put it back into my system and see what happens

 

no dont do that...just asking from problems later...

if she has the same type of memory then take her RAM out and put it in urs and try to install windows....if it runs better then ur memory is prolly bad

 

Only sata drives that have issues is 200Gig+ Maxtors on the Nforce4 chipsets its a known issue and some hatachi thats all


SFLG35 best thing i could suggest to do is get a cd called Ultimate boot cd UBCD
it has every test you can run on your pc..ie you can test the HDDs see if they are still good or if its the memory..cpu and so on.. here is the link
http://ubcd.sourceforge.net/download.html

 

I wouldn't do that. Windows will load the chipset drivers and other drivers based on the hqardware in her system. It will then be a bit messy when you move it to your system.

I wouldn't put her memory in your computer. It could possible ruin her memory too.

We already know that two sticks of Dan's memory have gone bad. POST codes and boot testing proved that.

Excellant idea. I mentioned run-time CDs like BartPE and Knoppix... UBCD is another good one... probably the best now... It does take a bit of time to build the boot CD though.

 

**** thats exactly what i have a 250 maxtor and my damn mb runs nforce4
so should i just return the drive?? and get a new one?? what about the seagate drives??

 

ok but why does it still screw up when i use the ide drive now that we know it wont work with the sata drive??

 

i there a way to fix the sata drive so it will work with nf4??

 

if you do a search on the nforce 4 chipsets there are guys that have tried and conluded that its a maxtor problen what happens there is massive data curruption and the you are fubared..suposedly there is a firmware update out there but i have yet to find it.....Western Digital, seagate( but seagate just bought out maxtor so we will see how the new gen are) are fine also some hatachis are ok

here is a link http://www.theinquirer.net/?article=29570

 

alright so i guess i will return that maxtor drive on friday.
im goin to boot with the basic cd from that link
whats the difference between the full and basic?
also my system still hangs/ freezes/ screen goes blank after formating on my ide drive
it does this when it has restarted and brings up the install process with the mouse and stuff where it says that you have 39 mins left. is my ide drive bad as well??
anyone got a ide hd sitting around