timW

Hi again,
I've spent the last three hours going over posts both here and and on other sites, and though I've seen many similar problems to the one I'm currently experiencing none seem to be quite the same. I'm hoping this is just something simple, because it doesn't seem to be as big an issue as some others I've seen with booting problems.

I gave up trying to find where to connect the front USB wires and figured I could well live without them until some future date. After trying to power the system up intially nothing happened at all - very anticlimatic when I half feared it might blow up in a shower of sparks - and I eventually figured out I'd connected the front power switch on the board backwards. After that - Bingo! Up it came.

Unlike some I don't seem to have a problem getting into BIOS, it's just that I don't know what it is the machine wants of me, because once I exit - or if I bypass BIOS - I get an error message stating that there is no drive attached to the fast track controller and that BIOS is not installed. Oddly enough, the POST madame then pipes up with 'Computer now booting from operating system' and then nothing happens - outside of a message on screen stating that I need to 'Reboot and select proper boot device or insert boot media in selected boot device and press key'.

Anyone have any ideas? I took a lead from someone elses problem and simply stuck the windows CD in the drive to see if the computer was trying to access it, but that didn't work. Neither did inserting the ASUS disk, which is the other option I thought little miss ASUS was after. The fact that BIOS is readily available, and that I'm not actually receiving any error messages from the POST system, lead me to believe that there's just a minor glitch - either in my brain or in the hardware - that's causing the problem.

I figured that maybe there's a conflict in the way I set up the hardware - such as the two DVD units being at odds with each other in the master/slave configuration I set up, but all seems okay, in fact the BIOS system shows that it recognizes everything as being there, and that all components like the fans, CPU, etc are functioning (The 3.0 Prestcott is running at 49C with the standard cooling unit, which concerns me a little, as I thought it would be lower given that it has very little load on it at present). One odd thing is that the computer shows the Jaz drive during the start up sequence, but not on the main page with the other hardware.

Only things I've played around with on BIOS so far is to disable the onboard audio, as suggested before, re-arrange the booting order of the drives to that reccomended in other posts (CD first, floppy second, HD third) and enable all the voice prompts in case I miss something along the way. Everything else is as I found it.

Would anyone like to offer some suggestions?

Thanks.......Tim

Asus P4P800-E deluxe
P4 3.0E
Kingston 512 DDR RAM PC3200
Radeon 9600 Videocard
Seagate soundcard
DVD+RW
DVD ROM
Seagate 80 GB SATA HD
400W power supply

mark3567

Hi,

I have an ASUS board P4c800-e deluxe, so it is not the same as yours, but there are some similarities. I would suggest you go into the BIOS setup menu and make sure your onboard promise controller is DISABLED. Then check your basic setup in the BIOS setup menu (usually section 4) and follow the pattern to make sure you have enabled the SATA options that you select in the MAIN part of the BIOS setup menu. When done, save and reboot and that should get you going a little better.

clintfan

Please read the sticky thread, titled Sticky: Promise POST Message: "No Device is Found! BIOS is not installed." at the top of the forum. Likely this is not a problem but merely informational.



If this is a sort of Zip drive, usually these are supposed to be positioned as the Secondary Slave. The rest of the devices then have to live around that restriction. Just a thought...



You list a single HDD here. I am going to presume that's all you've got. In that case you will be best off if you attach this to the port labelled SATA1, because it's driven by your main chipset and requires no special drivers; on your model this port is the 2nd one down from the top.



Likely your boot order is not set properly. Go back into the BIOS.

First visit the Main- IDE Configuration screen. Verify it is set to the default values, which are:

Onboard IDE Operate Mode= Enhanced
Enhanced Mode Support On= S-ATA
Configure S-ATA as RAID= No
IDE Detect Time Out= 35

Then ESC and arrow-right to visit the Boot screen.

With only one HDD present there should not be a "Hard Disk Drives" menu here; if there is, choose it, hit Enter, then go in and shuffle the devices so your "3M Seagate" device is listed as "1st Drive" and all others are "Disabled". Then ESC. (3M means Third Master, i.e. your SATA1 port).

Now go into the "CD ROM Devices" menu; this menu will be here since you have 2 optical devices. You will need to choose ONE of these to "boot" CD's from; you'll still be able to use all drives, but you need to pick one to boot from! Shuffle the devices so that that device is listed as "1st Drive". Then ESC.

Finally, back in Boot, choose "Boot Device Priority", and hit Enter. Shuffle the devices into this order: DVD first, then Floppy, then 3M Seagate (hard drive). For some reason these mobos need this order or else they don't find the CD.

Insert that OS Setup CD into the chosen boot drive.
THEN hit F10 to save.

The PC will reboot, and it should read that CD. DO NOT "press F6" when told that you can!... that's just a reminder and in your situation you don't need this. Just ignore it and after 10 seconds Setup will continue. You should be fine now.

Hope this helps,

-clintfan

timW

Hi again,
Apologies for taking a while to get back to update developments in my computer endeavors and to also thank people for their help. As many would be aware there’s a major hurricane heading Florida’s way yet again, and after just cleaning up after one a few weeks ago here in Orlando we now seem to be destined to get slugged yet again. It’s been a little chaotic getting ready for it, which is why I only just got back to addressing the computer issues from a few days ago.

Firstly many thanks to both Mark 3567 & Clintfan for their timely advice. It turns out I only had two minor issues to deal with to get the computer up and running. The first was to disable the promise controller, as suggested by Mark. The second piece of invaluable advice came from Clintfan, who clued me up to the fact I had to have one of the DVD units as the booting unit – I had thought either of the DVD units would do the job, and as luck would have it the operating system CD was in the wrong unit. Once these two problems had been addressed up she came, much to my delight. Relatively speaking, I think I got off lightly compared to some of the headaches others have had.

Computer by and large seems to be running well. CPU temperatures for the 3.0E and standard fan are a little higher than I would like, but standard I guess for the Prestcott in normal configuration. Seems to run around 46C - 47C idling, around 54C – 55C under load – this with the fan running at around 2400 – 2600 RPM most of the time, increasing to over 3K to bring the temp back down when the CPU hits the 50’s. Am I right in guessing that ASUS/Intel figure on keeping the CPU running around 50C – that’s what the fan seems to want to do in auto. Had a fright an hour or so into running the machine when I got flashed with a message that the temperature had spiked to 88C, but after quickly turning the unit off and rebooting everything was back to normal, and has been ever since. I can only figure it might have been a glitch in the program.

Last remaining problems seem to be with internet connectivity, as nothing I do seems to have any effect. As far as the machine is concerned there is no modem attached for dial-up purposes, and it doesn’t recognize the fact the cable link/Ethernet connection exists either. I’ve even tried connecting a separate Ethernet connector into a vacant PCI slot to see if that would work –it did on the backup computer I was using to post here before – but the computer won’t recognize its presence either, during startup or when I get windows to do a search under New Hardware. I’ve tried seeing if the Brighthouse CD would at least detect anything but it says no, and oddly enough another error message it throws at me is that my machine is too slow, claiming it’s only 299MH – seems it’s dropping the last digit in its reading of the processor speed. The hardware wizard confirms that the system seems to be having issues with the Ethernet controller.

One last point. I hate waste and I figured that my old 20G HD is still functioning perfectly so why not throw it on board as well, even though it’s not a SATA unit. Can I do this (and how) without compromising the speed of the main 80G unit? I was told that an older non SATA HD would slow up the other unit, but wouldn’t that only be the case if they were connected via the same cable? Through separate IDE connections I thought they might function completely independently of each other as storage devices. At the very least I need to hook the smaller unit up so that I can transfer some minor bits and pieces across that weren’t backed up on CD.

Thanks in advance.

Tim

PS – Thanks again to Xtant for the advice on the 9 pin connections. Makes sense now. 4 into 9 just didn’t seem to make much sense before!

Xtant

Have you checked the BIOS to see if the onboard NIC is enabled?

timW

Hi again Xtant,
You got me there. I went backwards and forwards through BIOS and couldn't find anything labelled NIC. Where or what is it?

Tim

elf

onboard network card i believe

NIC = Network Interface Card

timW

Well, it's up - and on line!

The problem was with the cable router box, not the computer. The thing had all three lights on, the data light was flickering, so all seemed well with it and its connection to the computer. I blamed the poor old PC, when it was blameless!

Only issue left now is connecting the old HD to the computer either permanently or to shift data across, as mentioned before. Views or information happily accepted.

More from curiousity than anything else, I noticed through this problem that the device manager also listed a problem with the HD, with the usual exclamation mark highlighting the problem. Under the following header was found the ensuing error message -

Standard IDE/ESDI hard disk controller

This device cannot find enough free resources that it can use. (Code 12)
If you want to use this device, you will need to disable one of the other devices on this system. Click Troubleshooter to start the troubleshooter for this device

Well everything obviously seems to be running just fine, so I can't see why the operating system would be having issues with it.

To every one who helped me through this a big thank you. It's been very much appreciated. The internet gets a lot of negative feedback at times but I tell you, I think it's the greatest information resource we've ever had, a vast store of knowledge scattered around the world and readily available at the touch of a keyboard. I like to think of it as some sort of **** model, the internet as a living organism similar to a brain, with all of us scattered round the globe as its neuron information sources, each of us throwing in our own knowledge and unique experiences. Assembled together like that it's the greatest database of all time, a Britannica on a vast scale that we can all miraculously tap into at need, one that even offers opinions and views to go with the knowledge - what more could you ask? 20 years ago I probably wouldn't have had a hope in hell of assembling the computer together in the manner in which I did, starting from scratch and liasing with a few people here and there to iron out the bugs - I probably wouldn't have even attempted it.

Thanks to everyone who helped, and to everyone in here who does the same for others.

Tim