custom pc problems. again. again.

[totokan]

Well, the specs are:
Asrock775v88+ mobo (note this one is a 'plus'. not much different than the other...)
Intel Pentium 4 2.66ghz processor, 533mhz fsb, lga775.(same as before)
PNY 512 MB PC3200 DDR400 ram (a step up, due to the fsb needing ddr400)
ATI Radeon 9550 AGP, 256mb ddr ram (only ATI at staples not PCI or PCI-E)
400W coolmax psu (with -12v 1A thing i needed)
compaq persario 7000 series case (yah, i'm cheap there, but it's nice...)
Ok, well now that you know the spec's, heres the problem.
At boot, a screen comes up saying 'press <tab> key into user window!'
underneath that, it says there are no drives on primary or secondary IDE ports.
Pressing tab goes to the RAID setup, there it tells me I have no devices, too. exiting that or not pressing anything leads to a black page with a flashing white '_'. the only way out is to shut down. I checked the cables and the jumper settings, but it still does this! Help, someone?

[daguuy]

that happened with my computer so i gave it a better PSU and that fixed it. i don't know why, but it did

[totokan]

well, that probably would be because the psu did not have enough power to power the mobo,processor,videocard,drive(s) and hard disk all at the same time. Mine is a 400W, which is plenty of power (I think) for all of the above.
Plus, I have a resounding $0 left in my budget to buy another one. This one is about one day old. It came in the mail (newegg.com replacement) yesterday.
EDIT:
After removing everything except for the mobo and HD from the psu and removing all IDE devices except for the HD, and setting the jumper setting to 'master' (no jumper pin) from cable select, I now go straight to the black screen w/ flashing white '_'. I think this is a HD issue, but not sure. Anybody know?

[madc0w]

have you tried booting a live CD? Cause that will tell you if its a HDD problem or not.

[abbibi]

have you tried booting a live CD? Cause that will tell you if its a HDD problem or not.

Indeed. First and formost, get the CD/DVD working. THEN work on getting the hard drive working. Also, are you using any adapters or are they standard IDE?

[totokan]

1) standard IDE.
2) I can't get ANY drive working...

[SpongeBuell]

sounds like your motherboard or cables have a problem

[abbibi]

Is the floppy drive working? You could download the latest bios for your motherboard and flash it from the floppy.

[totokan]

floppy= not connected. the cable that i have does not reach from the top-right of the case to the bottom left, where the floppy connector is. They put in the worst place ever.
Well, when looking for HD's that use SATA, i found one at staples for 94.99. Thats 100GB.

[soundwave]

Newegg has 160GB SATA drives for that same price. Or spend an extra 10 dollars and get 250GB.

And just keep the floppy outside of the case, keep it plugged in for flashing the BIOS, then unplug and close case.

[totokan]

I'm not even sure plugging it in would work. I guess it's worth a shot. also, it is only a week old (the model) it just came out to replace the old one, and there are no fw updates.

[nos_slived]

HDDs piss me off, because when they are sold, they have "fake" lables. They say that it's 100GB because it's 100 billion bytes(100 000 000 000), but computer storage is counted in 1024, not 1000, so a 100GB hard drive is really only capable of storing about 93.13GB. I'm sorry, but this really pisses me off!
[/rant]

[totokan]

yah, i know. It's annoying, but it doesn't matter. OH NO! THEY LIED ABOUT 7GB OF SPACE! WHAT EVER SHALL I DO? It's 7 gigs. That'll hold 2 games, HL2 and GTA:SA (3 and 4 gigs, respectfully)

[nos_slived]

Hey, that's about 5 or 6 downloaded(I mean borrowed in a legitimate way) movies, or about 2000 MP3s(maybe a few less if they are long).

[totokan]

well, if the movies are dvd quality, 1.8.
If they are VCD's or Divx low quality, 10-ish.