Hey guys I'm really getting frustrated with this thing. This is my second computer I built my first one with ease now the second one is really giving me trouble... This one is for my Grandma her old one was really just messing up bad so she decided just to give me her credit card and let me build her a new one. So I went on Newegg and bought this: SAPPHIRE PI-AM2RS780G AM2+/AM2 AMD 780G Micro ATX AMD Motherboard, Thermaltake Purepower W0129RU 600 W ATX12V Power Supply 115/ 230 V CE, FCC, UL, CUL, TUV certification, and an AMD Athlon 64 X2 5000+ Brisbane 2.6GHz 2 x 512KB L2 Cache Socket AM2 65W Dual-Core Processor, then a local computer store had some cheep ram and a new HDD because dump me forgot that the new motherboards are ddr2 ram so i bought a P.O.S Super Talent 1 gig stick, and then grandma wanted a bigger hard drive so i got her a Maxtor 120 gb ide. Mind that these were the only brands this guy had and she wanted it now else i would have defiantly got something with a better quality name. So the problem is in BIOS, for when I try to install my windows xp with service pack 2 it wont give me the option to press any key boot cd and I have already gone into options to make boot from cd option #1 and when i unplug the hard drive it goes straight to the blue screen for installing windows then I've tried plugging it back in as soon as i see the screen but by then It's too late and it already recognized there was no HDD plunged in. really I'm just stuck and I forgot to tell you this is the second motherboard I have ordered the 1st one I got an RMA and got it replaced because it would actually recognized it and install Windows but it wouldn't restart on its own which made all the drivers not install. so any advice or a solution would be greatly appreciated!!
If that sounds the way I read it then you could have really messed up the new Motherboard. You need to keep in mind, static discharge and the fact that you never mess with anything on a motherboard when the computer is plugged in. The motherboard only has 1 IDE slot on it. Is your CD drive IDE as well as the HDD? Is the XP disk you are booting from one that you made or is it an actual copy of XP? I ask these questions to try to get a little clearer understanding of your setup. If your CD and HDD are both IDE and running on the same IDE port then you need to make sure to set one to master and the other to slave. The other option that you have is to buy a PCI IDE card. Now if one of them is SATA then we may have to add a floppy to the system and make you a startup disk for it to read the CD drive.
syxguns, can't plug in an ide drive while pc is turned on but a sata drive supposedly can but haven't tried yet.
Try going into the bios, go to onboard devices. Onboard Devices OnChip PCI Device Item Help PCIE LAN Enabled Onboard Lan Rom Enable Onchip USB Controller Enabled USB EHCI Controller Enabled USB Keyboard Support Enabled Make sure this is enabled. If you are not using SATA drives turn off the controllers as well. Another option, many computers will give you a one time boot menu usually by pressing the F12 key during post.
I wouldn't try it ever! Old habits die hard! The reason I mentioned it was because of this statement: Unless that was a typo, it says that the HDD is an IDE drive. I don't know if the CD drive is IDE or not, and that is why I mentioned setting the drive to slave. You can do that and it will work, but I don't recommend it. That is why I mentioned the control card. Here is a link to an example in case w00tman69 isn't familiar with what it is. http://en.marketgid.com/goods/488/2274/
