i built my rig a few months ago and since the first time i turned it on, its been giving me trouble

a few seconds after i power it up, the mobo pic pops up as it should

at this point, the boot can go one of two ways

the good way: the pic goes away, the hdd light begins to blink and windows loads

but more often than not, it unfolds like this: the hdd light stays off, the screen stays blank for a few seconds, then a whole lot of useless information regarding my cpu, hd, periferals (no error message of any kind) pops up and doesnt go away til i restart the pc, at which point it could either boot up properly or get screwy

as a side note, leaving my psu of for a few minutes seems to get it to boot when it gives me more trouble than usual

ive updated the bios a few times

ive changed the slot that i connect the hd to the mobo with

and my ram checks out fine

the hardware is as follows:

ASUS a8n5x
athlon 64 3200+
corsair xms 2x 512
western digital caviar SE 80gb sata
antec truepowerII 430 watt
geforce 7600gt
NEC ND-3550a

im guessing its something wrong with either the mobo or hd, but my resources limit my ability to swap out any parts to check

basically, im just wondering if anyone has seen this before and knows what to do before i start calling in favors to get some spare parts

i have that exact motherboard and i can reproduce the very same problem you have by screwing with the BIOS and pushig an overclock too high, or disabling the floppy disk controller while overclocked (dont ask, it just wont boot with the FDC disabled while overclocked)...

Quote: Originally Posted by Fu3lman i have that exact motherboard and i can reproduce the very same problem you have by screwing with the BIOS and pushig an overclock too high, or disabling the floppy disk controller while overclocked (dont ask, it just wont boot with the FDC disabled while overclocked)...

only problem with that is i havent overclocked anything on this computer, and i doubt i screwed up anything in the bios

all ive done in this pc's bios is have it boot off the cd drive to install windows (which i have changed back to boot from hd) and manually change the timings on my ram (thats the way that corsair kit works)

Quote: Originally Posted by milosh only problem with that is i havent overclocked anything on this computer, and i doubt i screwed up anything in the bios all ive done in this pc's bios is have it boot off the cd drive to install windows (which i have changed back to boot from hd) and manually change the timings on my ram (thats the way that corsair kit works)

i know this might not make you happy, but i would at least try letting the BIOS set the DRAM speed by its SPD (automatically), and then test by booting up 5 -6 times to test it...

hell, id just set everything in your BIOS to default...despite the theoretic performance loss or whatever, what good is any of it if you cant boot?

EDIT: i just want to emphasize that that motherboard is -very- finnicky with its boot configuration, so dont feel too bad if you find that setting everything to default fixes your problems.

ill definatly try that again, but before i went back into the to set the timings, i had already gotten the problem the second time i started it up

thanks for the advice though

EDIT: finally found a pic of the screen i get when it doesnt boot

EDIT:EDIT:added to fu3lmans rep

man try to clear the Bios

or try to boot form floopy or cdroom and format !

good luck !