OT: PC help

[kens]

Hello, i just put together my first computer and it didnt work out very well. i have it asking me what mode i want it in, safe, normal etc... everything was just put together today. its an AMD Atlon 64 3000+ with a 300 watt psu, Geforce 6600 256 PCIe and an ECS NFORCE4-A939. i have no idea what to do next. the jumper settings on the motherboard were left at default and according to the manual, its at the correct setting. if i select normal, safe mode etc. it just goes to the windows xp loading screen for a second, then flashes a blue screen and restarts.

is there another forum i can receiver help? im a total pc newbie

[NEO Dan]

Unplug PC
make sure your heatsink is making good contact to the CPU, enough thermal paste ect...
Pull out and put back in the memory
Check and give a wiggle to all the cables
you may have a driver conflict, mabey

every once in a while I get BSOD, the PC says I have a bad USB driver

Good luck
Dan

[donradick]

Provided Link: Ubuntu download (http://ubuntu-releases.cs.umn.edu//6.06/)


> Hello, i just put together my first computer
> and it didnt work out very well. i have it
> asking me what mode i want it in, safe,
> normal etc... everything was just put
> together today. its an AMD Atlon 64 3000+
> with a 300 watt psu, Geforce 6600 256 PCIe
> and an ECS NFORCE4-A939. i have no idea what
> to do next. the jumper settings on the
> motherboard were left at default and
> according to the manual, its at the correct
> setting. if i select normal, safe mode etc.
> it just goes to the windows xp loading
> screen for a second, then flashes a blue
> screen and restarts.

> is there another forum i can receiver help?
> im a total pc newbie

The 1st reply may have the answer - if your CPU overheats, the PC will shut down in a few seconds.
Another possiblity is that the power supply is not big enough to "drive" that CPU plus a PCIE videeo card. You might try a "regular" (PCI) video card to troubleshoot that.

If you have access to another PC, you can try downloadeing a Linux "live" CD. If that will boot and run, then the problem might be a problem with Windows. I'd suggest Ubuntu Live for that. At this point, I'd suggest the "Desktop-i386" image.

HTH,
-Don

[mattmirocha]

Is this a new harddrive or did you get the harddrive from your old computer.

Sounds like you took the hd out of your old computer which is OK but xp is still trying to use the drivers for the motherboard video card and other things that are no longer in use. What you need to do is put your xp disk in the drive, go into the bios menu and change the boot sequence to look at the cd first if not already done. Let the computer boot up from the xp cd. From there you can reinstall windows or there is an option to fix the current installation of xp which won't reformat but just reinstall all the xp files and drivers. Works pretty slick.

> Hello, i just put together my first computer
> and it didnt work out very well. i have it
> asking me what mode i want it in, safe,
> normal etc... everything was just put
> together today. its an AMD Atlon 64 3000+
> with a 300 watt psu, Geforce 6600 256 PCIe
> and an ECS NFORCE4-A939. i have no idea what
> to do next. the jumper settings on the
> motherboard were left at default and
> according to the manual, its at the correct
> setting. if i select normal, safe mode etc.
> it just goes to the windows xp loading
> screen for a second, then flashes a blue
> screen and restarts.

> is there another forum i can receiver help?
> im a total pc newbie

[jasonzielinski]

id have to agree with the other guy
unlike windows 98 / me you CANNOT just take the hard drive out of an XP machine and plop it into another machine and have it work. XP customizes the drivers it uses so if you change hardware, it crashes.
soloution, re-do windows xp.
you could test it out by downloading a copy of a bootable OS like knoppix and seeing if thats stable.

[dvishloff]

I would start by reinstalling/repairing from the windowsXP CD like another poster said.

The 6600 is more power hungry than some other video cards out there (the radeon series comes to mind) so your PSU might not be powerfull enough for that video card. You will spend about the same amount of money on a high quality psu as a cheap video card, so it's up to you, but I would probably upgrade the power supply first. As that will provide many more benefits to the rest of the system.

> Hello, i just put together my first computer
> and it didnt work out very well. i have it
> asking me what mode i want it in, safe,
> normal etc... everything was just put
> together today. its an AMD Atlon 64 3000+
> with a 300 watt psu, Geforce 6600 256 PCIe
> and an ECS NFORCE4-A939. i have no idea what
> to do next. the jumper settings on the
> motherboard were left at default and
> according to the manual, its at the correct
> setting. if i select normal, safe mode etc.
> it just goes to the windows xp loading
> screen for a second, then flashes a blue
> screen and restarts.

> is there another forum i can receiver help?
> im a total pc newbie

[envisionelec]

> Hello, i just put together my first computer
> and it didnt work out very well. i have it
> asking me what mode i want it in, safe,
> normal etc... everything was just put
> together today. its an AMD Atlon 64 3000+
> with a 300 watt psu, Geforce 6600 256 PCIe
> and an ECS NFORCE4-A939. i have no idea what
> to do next. the jumper settings on the
> motherboard were left at default and
> according to the manual, its at the correct
> setting. if i select normal, safe mode etc.
> it just goes to the windows xp loading
> screen for a second, then flashes a blue
> screen and restarts.

> is there another forum i can receiver help?
> im a total pc newbie

I didn't used to consider myself a well-versed computer guy, but I've been through all this now having had nice video cards that are incompatible with motherboards and SCSI drives that don't work with anything newer than Win98SE along with numerous network problems (don't ask).

I figured out the problems after days of work on them - the only way to learn, IMO.

The video card probably doesn't have the correct drivers assigned to it. I recommend a clean install of XP.

[kens]

thank you all for all your answers. i now know how to get to the manual booting screen. also, when i enter the Windows XP disk, it comes to a sreen that says windows could not start because the following file is missing or corrupt: system 32 hal.dll. Please reinstall a copy of the file above... what does this mean???

> Hello, i just put together my first computer
> and it didnt work out very well. i have it
> asking me what mode i want it in, safe,
> normal etc... everything was just put
> together today. its an AMD Atlon 64 3000+
> with a 300 watt psu, Geforce 6600 256 PCIe
> and an ECS NFORCE4-A939. i have no idea what
> to do next. the jumper settings on the
> motherboard were left at default and
> according to the manual, its at the correct
> setting. if i select normal, safe mode etc.
> it just goes to the windows xp loading
> screen for a second, then flashes a blue
> screen and restarts.

> is there another forum i can receiver help?
> im a total pc newbie

[daveh]

> thank you all for all your answers. i now
> know how to get to the manual booting
> screen. also, when i enter the Windows XP
> disk, it comes to a sreen that says windows
> could not start because the following file
> is missing or corrupt: system 32 hal.dll.
> Please reinstall a copy of the file above...
> what does this mean???

The hal.dll is a file that directs the operating system how to work with the hardware and it appears XP cannot find the file. I assume when you say Windows XP disk you mean the Install CD. It may be corrupt. If that is the case you need to get another install disk.

Are you trying to boot from a previous windows install hard drive? I would follow the advice of previous posters and reinstall Windows.

[kens]

yes im trying to reinstall windows xp and yea, the install disk. im also trying to install it on a previous hard drive. my cousin told me that simply repairing it would make the hd work with the new motherboard.

> The hal.dll is a file that directs the
> operating system how to work with the
> hardware and it appears XP cannot find the
> file. I assume when you say Windows XP disk
> you mean the Install CD. It may be corrupt.
> If that is the case you need to get another
> install disk.

> Are you trying to boot from a previous
> windows install hard drive? I would follow
> the advice of previous posters and reinstall
> Windows.

[daveh]

> yes im trying to reinstall windows xp and
> yea, the install disk. im also trying to
> install it on a previous hard drive. my
> cousin told me that simply repairing it
> would make the hd work with the new
> motherboard.

You can try this. No guarantees but it has worked.

Boot from the Windows XP cd and choose recovery console. Log in as administrator.

cd c:
attrib -h -r -s boot.ini
del c:\boot.ini
bootcfg /rebuild
fixboot

Then restart your computer and boot off the hard drive. It may be that the boot.ini is pointing to the wrong place on your hard drive and the OS is not being found.

Good Luck

Dave

[kens]

All i had to do was format my HD, clear it out and boot from the Windows XP cd. Wow Thank you all for your help! im up and running! Thanks for all your help!