Yes, another computer problem thread...

Factual Questions
1

OK, so I got a new motherboard, CPU, memory, and viedo card, and attempted to put everything together last night (except the video card.) However, it wouldn’t boot up. I would get the motherboard screen, then it would usually freeze up there. Sometimesd I could get into the BIOS, but again, within moments, it would freeze up. The motherboard also didnt want to detect my IDE devices. I disconnected my IDE devices, and still same problem. No beeps are anythhing telling me my memory is bad. I think the CPU might be overheating, possibly from too much thermal paste. I clean it off, add less, and reattach the heatsink. Still same thing. I try a different heat sink, since the one I was using had a small copper core that didn’t quite cover the entire CPU die (although the non-copper part of the heatsink was.) I stilll noticed some thermal paste overflow, so I used even less this time. I attach the heatsink (which was a pain in the arse.)

The first heatsink had a lever I pulled to lock it in to place, this oen was a more traditional one where I just apply a hell of a lot of pressure. I alsmost had success this time. It booted and actually recognized my IDE devices, then it actually started to boot up Windows from the hard drive, but sometime after the first Windows XP logo appears on the screen with the little blue bar it locked up. )(i went into the other room to tell my GF I was victorious, but came back to find I was not.)

Well, I think this time I might have actually used not enough thermal paste. But, alas, this heatsink is on so well I could not get it off for the life of me.

So, should I keep trying to get the heatsink off and check the status of the thermal paste, or does this seem like it might be caused by something different?

Here are my specs:

Athlon XP 3200+
Soyo KT600 Dragon Plus V2.0 Mobo
nVidia GeForce 4 Ti4200 video card (the new one I have yet to install is an FX 5900)
768 MB of PC3200 RAM (one 512 and one 256 stick.)
And for the record, yes, I removed everything and reinserted it, yes, I have removed all other peripherals, yes, I tried booting up with just one stick of RAM (each one,) yes, I tried booting up with none of my IDE devices attached, and everytime I get the same problem, it will lock up sometime either while at the mother board screen, ot shortly thereafter.

2

You cannot boot to Windows after making such drastic changes. You’ll have to reinstall Windows (I’d format and reinstall).
Didn’t the AMD come with thermal paste already on the die? That was my experience with the half a dozen AMD processors that I’ve installed.

3

Well, the thing is, I’m not even getting to Windows. And reformat? Not a chance in Hell. I’ll buy a new HD and install XP on that before I reformat and lose all my stuff.

4

You can try the Windows Recovery Console but you’re better off reinstalling XP. Just pop in the CD and let her rip. You don’t have to reformat but it’s generally a good idea.

5

Oh yeah, and you wouldn’t be getting into Windows. When Windows starts loading your mainboard drivers, it’s going to error out.

As long as your passing your POST and BIOS tests, your system is working fine. Just reload Windows.

6

Really? Because after swapping in new hardware (keeping just the HD) last February, that’s exactly what I did with my system, and Windows booted and found the new hardware - no problem.

7

HDs and videocards are cool (videocards of different brands like switching between ATI and Nvidia will need you to remove the driver before turning off the computer) will work.

Mainboards from different brands will not work. Windows loads mainboard drivers first and will not be able to recover properly if you switch boards without preparing windows first (like removing all mainboard drivers but it’s a PITA).

Memory, HDs, videocards and even CPUs are pertty simple. Mainboards are not (unless you’re switching between the same brands with similar drivers).

8

I just replaced my mobo/processor/memory under XP, and didn’t have to do a thing to the OS. I went from a PIII/733 Asus board to a P4/3.0 ASRocks board. In doing a little reading around the net and talking to few people, it seems to be hit or miss whether or not you have to re-install your OS. I’ve read somewhere it’s a 50/50 chance.

FTR - the new motherboard manual did state that you should always boot a new board and processor to a clean HD.

bouv, I was having an overheating problem as well, which I finally solved. However, at one point, my HSF assembly was not on quite right, and the sys wouldn’t boot up. It would just shut off after a few seconds. (Scared the crap outta me, as I thought I fried something!)

At any rate, I have a thread in IMHO about cooling my system, and I was told a thin layer of thermal paste is required.

9

That’s just it though, I don’t lnow if I am. When I start up, the screen displays the following:

A message about my video card
A nice graphic for my mainboard (it usually freezes here)
If it gets past that, some text appears on screen about searching for SATA devices (if it didn’t freeze up at the mainboard screen, it will here.)
THEN, after a few seconds of searching for any SATA device, the little gray bar indicating XP is starting appears (I only got this far that once.)
So it seems to me, that since 70% of the time it freezes at the mainboard screen and the other times it does so while the BIOS is still doing stuff, it doesn’t seem to be an XP problem.

Now that I think about it, I do have a spare HD I can use. It’s not bug, but it has enough space to install XP and that’s really all I need, right? I will try tonight to boot from CD and install XP on that HD. Unfortunately, since my laptop also decided to crap out on me, I won’t be able to tell you how it goes until tomorrow. (unless, of course, it works.)

10

I don’t know what to tell you - I switched mobos (different brands) with no problems, booting on first try back into Win98.

11

bouv, check out the post towards the bottom by D_Odds: http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?t=290418

12

Well, that’s basically what I did, I even cleaned with alcohol (though just 70%.) I think, however, that I applied too thin a layer. And should I apply it to the CPU die or to the heatsink?

Of course, I really can’t seem to get the heatsink off anyways, so…

13

I don’t see why it’s booting 70% of the time. Check your BIOS settings. You could try resetting it to default but it’s a gamble if you don’t know how to return it to normal.

When it starts looking for the SATA drive you’re all booted. You could try booting in safe mode and then removing all drivers from your old board. Again, doing it this way is generally bad but it should work. Download/install all your new mainboard drivers and you should be good (plus your new videocard drivers).

If you’re getting snagged at the BIOS part of the boot it could be a bad memory count, bad memory setting (FSB setting or CAS setting too high for your memory) or sometime else (does your board have dip switches for your CPU or something? Is it being properly reported when you boot?).

14

When I received my components, the heat sink had a square of thermal paste already on it. When I removed it, and applied my own store bought stuff, I put it directly on the CPU, as per the instructions.

Even though my system was running real hot (90 C), it was still running. Performance was obviously affected, but it ran. The only time it didn’t boot up was when the HSF assembly wasn’t installed correctly. (I couldn’t get one of the two lock down levers all the way down)

15

It’s not boting 70% of the time. It’s not booting at all! 70% of the time it halts at the BIOS screen, the other 30% it halts when loking for SATA drives. I can’t start in Safe mode cause it never gets that far.

I ordered a CPU and mobo combo, and they set the DIP switches to have the right FSB (200 Mhz.) I double checked in the manual and yup, it’s right. My memory is fine for the mobo. It says it can take up to PC3200, and that’s what I have. When I can get into the BIOS, it says my CPU is running at 2.3 Ghz, which i think is the clock speed for the XP 3200.

16

What BIOS are you using? The 3200 is a 2.2 GHz CPU.

What’s snagging it at boot? During the BIOS screen (where it should list memory, CPU, FSB, IDE detected devices and your mainboard maker) it should either pass that or crash with an error. Some errors take some time before they get displayed. Get into the BIOS and go through every setting. Make sure your memory timings are set to safe levels since you don’t mention your memory’s brand or maker.

17

My computer-troubleshooting ouji board is pointing towards motherboard or CPU.

18

That leaves you with either a bad video card, a bad or misconfigured mobo, or 2 bad sticks of RAM. The way you’ve been fooling around with DIP switches on the mobo tells me that you ought to look at that again. Otherwise, try a different vid card.

Echo other posters in saying that it is perfectly possible to swap a mobo under the same install of XP… XP will just try generic drivers and probably succeed to some degree.

There’s a possibility you could have killed an IC on the mobo or memory with static, or worse. I’ll share an anecdote of when I was starting out fooling with computers 8 years ago. I needed more ram for my PC, so I was scrounging around the office for “excess” sticks of RAM. However, nobody told me that you have to power off the computer before you add more RAM. You can imagine what happened… “that’s strange, it seems like every single stick of RAM in this office suddently went bad.” That’s when I learned that sometimes you can actually sniff a RAM stick for a characteristic burned smell if it’s gone bad. Hope you aren’t making that mistake.

19

No no, definetly not inserting anything when the computer is powered on. And I haven’t been messing with the DIP switches, they came already configured for the CPU.

OK, so last night I mamaged to remove the heatsink. I cleaned off all excess thermal paste, and applied a very thin layer on the CPU. It covered every pasrt of the CPU (well, not every part, just the little metal part sticking up.) I reattached the heatsink and booted up. Hey! it seems to work! I go into the BIOS and my temp is 100 degrees Farenheight. I laeve it for a while and I think it peaked at 102. I exited BIOS and try to let it boot. I get to the windows login screen, but yet for some reason the keyboard and mouse do not work. The mouse is optical and does not seem to even be getting power, and the keyboard does get power (i can turn num/caps lock on and off) but can not communicate with the rest if the PC. Argh! So close!

So I guess it’s an issue of XP not recognizing the drivers for the ports on the mobo, right? I tried to boot with my spare HD and my Win XP CD in the CD drive (and yup, I changed my BIOS to boot from CD,) but something weird happened. It didn’t go into the Win XP installation, it did some kind of odd check thing. I had a message at the top saying Novell Somethingor otherchecker. nd it gave a mesasge to try to boot from local drives, or from a network. Huh? Well, i told it to try and boot from local drives, and it went into some kind of RAM checker, or something. It had mesages like “RAM_IRQ: 11” or something. And then it was checking something (I wrote everything onscreen down, but forgot to bring it with me to work) and it kept counting up. it got to 50 then rebooted the checker thing it was doing.

Maybe it wasn’t booting from the CD and that was the default action when no OS is detected on the hard drive? Maybe the HD is causing a problem cause it’s from an XBOX? (FTR, the XBOX takes a normal, IDE hardrive. You can put any type of HD into it, so I don’t see why i couldn’t use it in my PC.)

Well, I also tried my old HD with the Win XP CD to see if I could just do a reinstall without reformatting, but I don’t recall what happened, it didn’t go into that checker thing, I think I just got a blank screen.

I ran memchecker and my RAM is A-OK. I will try using my new video card tonight in case the older one I was using is bad.

20

Heh. That’s exactly what happened to me as well. I checked things and rebooted about 5 times before it worked.

I suspect that if I had just powered up the first time, and let Windows do its thing for awhile, it would have eventually loaded. Just curious, but when you booted up and you say the keyboard and mouse didn’t work, how long did you wait until you shut it off?