[ssanoobab]

I recently bought a bare bones computer from tiger direct. I Love it and tell all my friends about what a good deal it was. Well one of my friends decided to get one for himself. He got it, put it together but when he tried to load the setup disk his CD rom drive would start to run the stop before it would do anything. The Cd drive is only a few weeks old and the hard drive and ram is brand new. Shouldn't the start up CD run when you put it in to set up all the drivers for the mother board. I am guessing everything is hooked up right. Any ideas why the CD won't boot up and go into the setup mode?

[kiwiguy]

The "setup disk" is probably the mptherboard drivers, which should be loaded from within Windows, once it's installed.

Its highly unlikely that a motherboard "setup disk" is bootable, and unless Windows is loaded there id no operating system to do the booting.

Perhaps if you define what the "setup disk" is it would help?

[ssanoobab]

when I said setup disk i was talking about the motherboard drivers. He has windows XP disc for his operating system. When any disc is put into his CD rom drive you can hear it start running. The small light on the front of the cd rom comes on but goes out after a few seconds. Nothing is on the hard drive, it is blank
Even thoguh the CD rom was only a few weeks old he thought it might be bad. He returned it and got another one and it does the same thing.
When the monitor is on its says "No Signal". He tried unplugging it and plugging it back to make sure it was conected to the tower.

This suff is all new:

The Ram is....Kingston ValueRAM 512MB 184-Pin DDR SDRAM DDR 400 (PC 3200)

The mother board is....Intel Desktop Board D865GVHZ

The processor is....Intel Celeron D 345 3.06GH OEM Processor

[loserOlimbs]

Follow KiwiGuy's advice.

Install Windows by booting with the windows disk.

Once Windows is up and running, then insert the driver disk.

[win2kpro]

Here is a Intel link for troubleshooting the D865GVHZ;

http://www.intel.com/support/motherb...z/hz_howto.htm

If he can't get the machine running after going through the troubleshooting procedure he may want to contact Intel support. Initially, he will need a credit card handy because there will be a charge of $25 (unless the price has gone up) but then Intel will turn him over to a tech for telephone support. When the tech reviews all the procedures with him if the tech decides to issue an RMA for the board then the $25 is not charged.

Before he contacts tech support (if necessary) he should have the board model number, serial number and revision number (AA number) written down since they will need that information for the RMA. Also, make sure the machine has a floppy drive installed since the tech will most likely want him to "blind flash" the BIOS before issuing an RMA.

If it is necessary to contact Intel he may also want to go ahead and go to this site;

http://downloadfinder.intel.com/scri...5&submit=Go%21

and make a bootable floppies of the recovery BIOS (P25) and normal flash BIOS (update P25). He should have copies of both on floppies since I don't know which one the Intel tech will tell him to use in the "blind flash".

Before he starts any troubleshooting the 1st thing he should do is to follow this link;

http://www.intel.com/design/motherbd/hz/hz_proc.htm

and make sure the processor he is using is supported by that boards AA number (revision number).

[kiwiguy]

Originally Posted by ssanoobab

when I said setup disk i was talking about the motherboard drivers. He has windows XP disc for his operating system. When any disc is put into his CD rom drive you can hear it start running. The small light on the front of the cd rom comes on but goes out after a few seconds. Nothing is on the hard drive, it is blank
Even thoguh the CD rom was only a few weeks old he thought it might be bad. He returned it and got another one and it does the same thing.
When the monitor is on its says "No Signal". He tried unplugging it and plugging it back to make sure it was conected to the tower.

This suff is all new:

The Ram is....Kingston ValueRAM 512MB 184-Pin DDR SDRAM DDR 400 (PC 3200)

The mother board is....Intel Desktop Board D865GVHZ

The processor is....Intel Celeron D 345 3.06GH OEM Processor

The "no signal" indicates the computer is not actually booting. As a minimum you would see the BIOS screen and Power On Self Test (POST) appear.

Unless the PC boots at least to the BIOS, you cannot load anything. The CD will not run anything as it has no CPU to control it until the PC boots.

[ssanoobab]

that sounds about right Kiwiguy. Is there anyway to tell if the processor is bad? also i am thinking if the ram was bad it might do the same thing. Am i right on that?

[kiwiguy]

If the RAM was bad I would expect at minimum a BIOS warning set of beeps, or one long repeating beep.

Basically it could be anything at this stage, it should be tested with the motherboard outside the case (sitting on a sheet of carboard) to eliminate the possibility of a short caused by case standoffs.