We got a new PSU yesterday, and didn’t get home until later, so I didn’t try installing it until this morning.
I installed it and … nuthing changed. I spent “I have no clue how much time” re-connecting stuff and re-doing that, reading on the mobo forum when I had a chance to use Frankies laptop, and so here’s what I ended up doing, something in this process is what got my NF8-V mobo POST and start up BIOS:
Put the memory into the slots and pull them out, in and out many times. This gets the board to recognize the hardware … it’s the board that needs it, not the hardware.
Put the AGP card in and out just as the memory. This one is key, I think.
Both those things I did more than I can say. I kept going. I took the board out of the case to do all of this extra “try and make it post” work.
The new PSU is a powerful one, a good brand, according to the people that yap about it on the mobo forums. Enermax 600watt.
My old board, the NF7-S ver. 2, had a 20-pin main power connection, as well as a 12v 4-pin connection.
My old PSU provided those cables.
My new board, the NF8-V, has a 24-pin main power connection, as well as a 12v 4-pin connection. The 24-pin connection, according to the manual, isn’t necessary, you can use a 20-pin connection.
My new PSU, the Enermax, has a 24-pin cable, and it has the extra 4-pins split-off-able, and also has the 12v 4-pin cable.
The NF8-V board won’t post with all the cables plugged in. I had to take the 4-pin part off of the 24-pin cable and use it as a 20-pin for the board to post.
It was that cable dance along with the AGP and Memory slots that got the board posting.
It was a glorious moment when I heard the monitor go PING as it lit itself into action. It was very exiting when I heard the first BEEP from the board too, which came a couple of power button pushes before the monitor activation.
So then I went into BIOS and saved minimal settings to run safe. Then I added the board back into the case and screwed everything down, and connected the harddrive. I started up the computer again, it worked and recognized the hard drive.
I booted into windows, it worked, just not specific new hardware like ethernet (I didn’t re-install windows in any form or fashion, either.)
I turned of the computer then, and connected the CD-ROM and then fired it all up again, and the system recognized the CD-ROM just fine, and so I then installed the new board drivers.
I wasn’t able to get the ethernet port to work, windows didn’t recognize it. Updating the drive in Device Manager didn’t work, neither did re-installing the driver from the Nvidia disc. So I then went into Add/Remove Software un-installed anything Nvidia related.
Then I restarted, and clicked on the disc of Nvidia driver setup stuff again, and THIS time it all installed as it should have.
My mistake, if you can call it that, was in not un-installing previous drivers that were hanging out from the old board. I wasn’t trying to flawlessly install though, just trying minimalist installing … I have lost the panel as far as I know, which was from the other case I first had this copy of Windows XP Home on. That’s the place where the license sticker was, the only place I know it was on. If I wrote it down anywhere, I have no clue as to where. So to reinstall is out of the question, and a Repair install may not require a license input, but might mess up and require a clean install anyhow.
I hope I can find that old license number. It does rightfully belong to this copy of Windows I’m working on. I do have another license from my defunct Vaio GRV-550, but I have application for that on the old NF7-S board if I get that going. So I hope this copy stays good. I hope I can find a way to get that old license number back. And I hope I can find what’s wrong with that other board and get that setup as another computer, for the children.
This computer I’m on now has a good PSU and a new great Athlon 64 3000+. That’s not the fastest, but is much better than the Athlon XP 2100+, and with it, my DDR 400 memory can run! It’s Corsair PC3200 512×2. I only have single channel mode, two slots, on this board. I can have up to 2gigs of memory … which would mean I could get two 1 gig sticks, and put this matched pair on the older board, where it can run in dual-channel. 🙂 That’s later, for sure.
My next upgrade to this computer is either a graphics card or a DVD-R/RW drive. The latter is likely the cheaper to buy and install, but it’ll want pricey discs to write to. I could then watch movies on this computer though! 🙂 That cost nothing extra with the collection we have. A graphics card is needful, this one is a Radeon 7500, which is a 64mb card. It’s not bad, but way lesser than I really do need to have. I want to get a really good card, really good. My board is Nvidia based and that’s the type of video card I’ll get.
I really do like the Abit boards. They are friendly to the advanced user, and have good BIOS settings.
My struggles with this board were just tough since I had another computer with the same symptoms, but it was an old system that quit working, while this was really what I considered a “new system” even though many of the parts were older from that other system. A new board is not like a board that has been running, as was demonstrated with this one today. It’s the toughest board I’ve had to get going. Not that I’m super experienced, mind you, but I’ve had a few I’ve worked on in the last couple of years.
It wasn’t that I hadn’t really put the hardware in good and firm, clicking it, re-seating it, I had to go overboard by far and do it again and again, until finally the board came to fuller life and then posted. 🙂 Before that, I was getting not one single beep out of it. It didn’t holler about no video card, or no memory. It just sat there spinning the fans and lighting up the LEDS on the board. It would just stare at me. As I read on the abit forums, this applies, it just sat there mocking me.
Simple PSU solution? No.
a Complicated put the memory and AGP cards in until that, ALONG WITH the PSU being a good one, is enough and the board beeps, burps and comes to life, along with the monitor. 🙂
I have many more tricks up my sleeves now, much more experience. Every hardship and trial brings understanding of another level. 😉