[Swen2005]

Hi,

MSI Motherboard, Corsair Valueselect RAM

I just finished building the following system for my daughter. Next week, I was going to bring it to Tampa from Chicago as a suprise for her. But I am now having a little trouble with the set up. The problem is:

I powered up the system this morning and everything went fine. Entered the BIOS and set the boot priority, Date and Time and checked the fan rpm's and CPU temp. I turned it on and off about 10 times, letting it run 10 to 15 min each time. XP has not been loaded yet.

I noticed that the DVD ROM was the Secondary Slave and I wanted to change to Master. I reset the jumper. When I started the system, it showed the mb logo (Platinum). I hit delete and the system went to black with the curser in the upper left corner blinking. I tried it several times and I couldn't get into the BIOS.

I reset the jumper back to the original place and started the system but the same thing happened. The D-Bracket 2 indicated where the boot halted:

"Initalizing Floppy Drive Controller
This will initialize Floppy Drive and controller"

I have disconnected everything but the vid card and 1 stick of RAM. It still goes to black screen. I discharged the BIOS and tried again. No help. Then I allowed the system to start without any entries and it said it was in safe mode and default setup entered, "enter DEL to go to BIOS setup" I hit DEL but back to black screen with blinking curser.

The system still hangs and on the LED's on D-Bracket (3 green with the top right red).

Sure don't know what to do. The fact that all was well before I goofed with the DVD ROM jumper, I thought it was the problem.

Anyone that can help an old man out? I was just trying to be a good Dad? Sure would appreciate it. Thanks.

Swen

This is the problem system.

MSI K8N Neo4 Platinum/SLI
AMD 4000+ CPU
Antec 480w Neopower
Zalman S9500 CPU Cooling
2 GB (1GB x 2) Corsair ValueSelect
EVGA GeForce 6800GT
74GB WD Raptor HD
250GB Caviar HD
X-Fi XtremeMusic Creative Blaster
DVD Rom (Gigabyte)
DVD Rewriter (Lite-On
Cooler Master Mid Case
AG Neovo E-19A

 

[Evil Genius]

By the looks of it it appears that you've built a couple of comps before, and everything looks to be fine. However i think your problems are directly related to the motherboard CMOS being corrupt. One soution may be to first clear your CMOS by usuing the clear CMOS jumpers on the motherbord and then goto the MSi website at www.msicomputer.com and download the latest bios and reflash your CMOS. You may need to istall a floppy drive in order to reflash your CMOS.

However if this doesnt work, or you are unable to even initialize the floppy drive and are totally unable to reflash the CMOS then my suggestion is to replace the motherboard and try again. You may have gotten a bum board with a bad CMOS chip.

Goto the retailer you bought the motherbard from and exchange it, or you can contact MSI directly as it should be covered under warrenty.

Hope this helps !!

 

[Swen2005]

Hi E G,

I was fooling around with my floppy drive to see if I could get it recognized, and I saw reported many lines of "unknown PCI device connected". The only PCI device was the X-FI sound card. I took it out and there you have it. I was able to boot to A> with a floopy. Also get into the BIOS. I guess I should disable the onboard sound before I put the card in.

I have connected another stick of RAM and it's ok so far. I guess I will connect one by one until I get a clean post and still get into the BIOS.

Than I'll load XP and format the HD's.

Thanks for your help.

Swen

 

[Swen2005]

Hi E G,

I have everything loaded on the system. But the X-Fi sound card. I disabled the "onboard sound" and when I post, the system hangs on black screen. I tried other PCI slots and same results.

Are their any more places in the BIOS the will enable the PCI slots?

Thanks,

Swen

 

[Swen2005]

Hi,

Here is the problem. Right from Creative Labs. My card is on the way (RMA) to them for replacement.

From Creative Forum..............
http://forums.creative.com/creative...ssage.id=26289&view=by_date_ascending&page=15

A problem was identified on nForce4 based systems where the system ran into difficulties, related to the enumeration of the cards with 2MB (X-Fi XtremeMusic and X-Fi Platinum). This resulted in a variety of symptoms:
- The system may freeze or not boot
- The system may list multiple "Unknown PCI Device" entries and lead to a BSOD
- The system may reboot repeatedly (when "Automatically Restart" is enabled in the Advanced system settings)
Some motherboard manufacturers have already acknowledged this issue and released a BIOS update to resolve it. For systems where a BIOS update is not available we will be providing an alternative resolution in the form of a replacement card with modified firmware. Please contact Customer Support for your region for further details.

Swen

 

[common]

""
I noticed that the DVD ROM was the Secondary Slave and I wanted to change to Master. I reset the jumper. When I started the system, it showed the mb logo (Platinum). I hit delete and the system went to black with the curser in the upper left corner blinking. I tried it several times and I couldn't get into the BIOS.

""

yeah, the jumper should be set to master and the drive should on the end of the IDE cable .

 

[Swen2005]

Hi Common,

I have the drive cable (DVD Rom) connected to the Pri IDE (jumper slave) and the DVD RW drive cable connected to the Secondary IDE (Jumper slave). Both HD are connected to the SATA 1&2.

If I try to change jumpers to DVD Rom master, will that change any drive letters? Now that I found out that it was the X-Fi sound card that was stopping the post, I would think I can try it.

Thanks,

Swen