Ok so heres the set up: DVD Burner, Hard Drive, Processor, Mobo, Ram, and PSU. (BTW, everything is retail, and still has manufacturer warranties)

Now for the back story:
My dad is the most computer illiterate person i've ever had the pleasure of knowing. But the way todays day and age is, not having one is pretty inconvenient, woulnt yuh say. so he decides he wants one after tinkering with mine for awhile, since he knows i won't be in texas much longer. All he does or would ever do is search the web, download music, and check email. So i built him this, with dual core so he wouldn't get bogged down much should the computer start a virus scan while he uses it.

So heres the problem:
I've just finished piecing it together, and now its time to install windows. Got him XP, Windows installs without a hitch, Now i try to hardwire his computer to my router so we can get him set up with the interwebby and all the latest drivers for his set up. Oh crap, for some reason my integrated ethernet port isn't working. Ethernet cables plugged in and there is a light showing up there, and the router shows its getting signal, but when i go into the connections menu, it doesn't show any ethernet ports at all. (not the major problem at the moment, we are getting to that)

Well crap, i figure ill have to just start installing the drivers that came with the current discs. No biggie, so i pop in the first cd i spot, the seagates utility disc. Start installing, and all of a sudden the screen goes screwy. By screwy i mean draw a little rectangle on your screen, and crop it so it shows a million of whats in those boxes all over the screen. Stays like that for bout 30 sec. I try CTRL+ALT+DEL. Nothing happens, and its late i just want to go to bed, so i hit the power button, and it shuts off. (ah ha, we have arrived)

Come back to it today, and now it won't load windows at all. it goes through all the hardware checks, then starts to boot from the hard drive, and the screen just stays black. For minutes. Well, maybe the integrated graphics card pooped out, but when i hit the reset button, it shows the bios load screen, and i can go into the bios menu. Northbridge temps, and cpu temps are at 34, and everything seems fine. Maybe i just currupted windows, so i change the boot sequence to be the dvd drive again, save and restart the pc with xp in the drive. Computer says hit any button to boot from disc and hit the any button(well i hit the space button, couldn't find that damn any key). Once again black screens for as long as i care to wait.

I beg of you, please tell me what the hell happened.

Well seeing as you got nothing in the pc yet.....................

Clear the BIOS

Do a bare bones boot up with one stick ram , one cd drive , one hard drive and video . See if that does the trick , if it doesnt, then i would say wipe the drive using Killdisk or Dban or some type of drive cleaner program and start over.

Once you have it booted up into windows , install the LAN driver and you should be able to hit the interweb for all your needed updates etc etc .

Quote: Originally Posted by HigHTecHReDNecK Well seeing as you got nothing in the pc yet..................... Clear the BIOS Do a bare bones boot up with one stick ram , one cd drive , one hard drive and video . See if that does the trick , if it doesnt, then i would say wipe the drive using Killdisk or Dban or some type of drive cleaner program and start over. Once you have it booted up into windows , install the LAN driver and you should be able to hit the interweb for all your needed updates etc etc .

Also, new mobo? Go into BIOS, load the defaults, and Save. Then move forward with trouble shooting.

also, did you notice this on the product page?
"Due to the High Performance Memory design, motherboards or system configurations may or may not operate smoothly at the JEDEC (Joint Electron Device Engineering Council) standard settings (BIOS Default on the motherboard) such as DDR2 voltage, memory speeds and memory timing. Please confirm and adjust your memory setting in the BIOS accordingly for better system stability.
Example: Kingston HyperX DDR2-800 PC-6400 operates at 2.0V, 4-4-4-12.
For more information about specification of high performance memory modules, please check with your Memory Manufactures for more details." MSI Computer Corp. - Product


Good luck,

-godling

not sure whats happening there, but i can tell you one thing, the -only- time ive seen a system behave anywhere near what you are describing was during an on-site troubleshoot, and the culprit was a single bad stick of ram.

couldnt hurt to try them individually to eliminate them as a possible culprit

EDIT: if your ethernet port isnt showing up "at all" in your device manager (not even as an unknown device), then its highly likely that other, more serious issues exist on the motherboard in question. i wouldnt troubleshoot it too long before RMA'ing, **** happens, could have just been a fluke.

Well, thanks everyone, but it was the hard drive. I hooked it up to my working computer, and formated the drive, and when i booted from the cd, it took. Why it wouldn't let me fix everything by just bootin from the windows cd is beyond me. It would just hard freeze and do nothing. Oh well. Its running like a champ now. Thanks for all the advice though.