Welcome to TSF:
Lets give this one a shot ! / there are quite a few things that could cause this problem.
Lets start by removing mobo outside the case and do a bench test.
place the mobo on a cardboard or other non-conductive surface / my favorite is to place it on top of the mobo box ~~ this allows the edge of the mobo to hang over a tad to allow full seating of the video card
visually inspect the CPU (did you install the thermal grease correctly????) is the heat sink properly fastened and secure ???? You must connect the cpu fan to the mobo to bench test / if the fan does not spin the mobo will not start!!
check the ends of the psu conenctors that attach the power (20 pin and the 4-pin) for signs of heat melting ??? if good proceed to next step
add video card and one stick of ram (check your mobo manual to see which slot must be used for single stick config) also check video card slot and ram stick slots for signs of over heating
connector mobo power connectors / both the 20 pin and the 4-pin if required / make sure to listen for the "click" of the locking latch / I worked on a cusotmers PC last week and the only problem was a failure to push the 4-pin in far enough - it made contact some times but not consistently / especailly if cables were wiggled !!!!
connect the case switch to the mobo / (the jumper pins on the mobo for the on & off power switch )
dont run any drives at first / at this point we are just looking for the bios screen to complete
then add a hard drive / make sure you have a good relaible cable (prefer a new 80 pin IDE drive cable~~ they are cheap now to buy) and power conenctor / same thing / just leave the hard drive resting on a magazine while your bench testing
I would only run with the single drive you want to use as the primary master / no slaves
what are you using for a PSU make and model ?????? If you are not running a good name brand reliable PSU of atleast 450 watts thats probally youre problem . any voltage fluctuations will make hard drives act very weird
enermax, antec, OCZ, sparkle are the only PSU's that I reccommend / if a PSU comes as part of a Case and combo deal the chances are the PSU is poor quality and inconsisent/ the P4 systems are very finicky about voltage consistency if they sense fluctuations all kinds of weird crap can and will happen !!!!
last thing : I strongly suggest you wipe the drive with a drive eraser to make sure there arent some corrupted files on the drive / you can connect the hard drive during the bench test and kill two birds with one stone / bench test and erase drive (it takes hours though ?????? about 1.5 hrs for 18 gigs !!!!) or you could erase the drive while its slaved to another computer / just make sure to disconnect the power connectors of any drives you dont want erased !!! DBAN can ERASE MULTIPLE DRIVES / when you start dban just type autonuke when you see it !!
http://dban.sourceforge.net/ download the floppy version
post back the results of your bench build
regards
joe
Lets give this one a shot ! / there are quite a few things that could cause this problem.
Lets start by removing mobo outside the case and do a bench test.
place the mobo on a cardboard or other non-conductive surface / my favorite is to place it on top of the mobo box ~~ this allows the edge of the mobo to hang over a tad to allow full seating of the video card
visually inspect the CPU (did you install the thermal grease correctly????) is the heat sink properly fastened and secure ???? You must connect the cpu fan to the mobo to bench test / if the fan does not spin the mobo will not start!!
check the ends of the psu conenctors that attach the power (20 pin and the 4-pin) for signs of heat melting ??? if good proceed to next step
add video card and one stick of ram (check your mobo manual to see which slot must be used for single stick config) also check video card slot and ram stick slots for signs of over heating
connector mobo power connectors / both the 20 pin and the 4-pin if required / make sure to listen for the "click" of the locking latch / I worked on a cusotmers PC last week and the only problem was a failure to push the 4-pin in far enough - it made contact some times but not consistently / especailly if cables were wiggled !!!!
connect the case switch to the mobo / (the jumper pins on the mobo for the on & off power switch )
dont run any drives at first / at this point we are just looking for the bios screen to complete
then add a hard drive / make sure you have a good relaible cable (prefer a new 80 pin IDE drive cable~~ they are cheap now to buy) and power conenctor / same thing / just leave the hard drive resting on a magazine while your bench testing
I would only run with the single drive you want to use as the primary master / no slaves
what are you using for a PSU make and model ?????? If you are not running a good name brand reliable PSU of atleast 450 watts thats probally youre problem . any voltage fluctuations will make hard drives act very weird
enermax, antec, OCZ, sparkle are the only PSU's that I reccommend / if a PSU comes as part of a Case and combo deal the chances are the PSU is poor quality and inconsisent/ the P4 systems are very finicky about voltage consistency if they sense fluctuations all kinds of weird crap can and will happen !!!!
last thing : I strongly suggest you wipe the drive with a drive eraser to make sure there arent some corrupted files on the drive / you can connect the hard drive during the bench test and kill two birds with one stone / bench test and erase drive (it takes hours though ?????? about 1.5 hrs for 18 gigs !!!!) or you could erase the drive while its slaved to another computer / just make sure to disconnect the power connectors of any drives you dont want erased !!! DBAN can ERASE MULTIPLE DRIVES / when you start dban just type autonuke when you see it !!
http://dban.sourceforge.net/ download the floppy version
post back the results of your bench build
regards
joe