Help!!new build problem w/A7N266-VM

  • Thread starter Thread starter Ron
  • Start date Start date
R

Ron

Hello,

On first power up I get message saying "boot disk failure, insert
system disk and hit enter". I have no idea what this is. This is only my
second PC build. The PC recognizes all drives, and all components are new.
Do I need to do anything to the HDD before using? Format? No OS is
installed or anything yet. All I get on power up is the above
message...please advise.

Ron
 
Does that message mean it just needs the OS boot disk?? Going to be running
win98, so do I just need the win98 bootup disk?? I think this was a "Duh!"
question perhaps?? If it just needs the boot disk I think I have one laying
around. I tried using the MB support CD but nothing happens.

Ron
 
Ron said:
Hello,

On first power up I get message saying "boot disk failure, insert
system disk and hit enter". I have no idea what this is. This is only my
second PC build. The PC recognizes all drives, and all components are new.
Do I need to do anything to the HDD before using? Format? No OS is
installed or anything yet. All I get on power up is the above
message...please advise.

Ron
Click to expand...

The BIOS is telling you it couldn't find an operating system to boot,
which makes sense as you haven't installed one. You need a bootable
floppy or CD to bypass that message and install an operating system.
 
well I found a boot disk I thought was win98 but was win95. Also tried a
boot disk I made from another computer. now have some new problems....

first, noticed floppy light was just staying on..not right. Switched the
ribbon cable around on floppy and its now at least reading the floppy(wasn't
before)

After trying the boot disk(after getting the Adrive to work right) the bios
will not show the cd-rom drive whereas before I tried the boot disk it
would. I tried using the driver disk for the cd rom but to no avail. All
bios shows now is HDD and floppy..??? thats where I stand.....

Ron
 
Ron said:
Does that message mean it just needs the OS boot disk?? Going to be running
win98, so do I just need the win98 bootup disk?? I think this was a "Duh!"
question perhaps??
Click to expand...

Yes, Yes, and... well, you said it, not me :-)
 
ok the friggin cd rom is working....came unplugged from MB when I swapped
out the floppy ribbon. Still no luck on getting the system to boot.....

Ron
 
ok got the boot disk working....finally.....I'm loading win98 now and
upgrading to XP in a few days(this PC is for MOM and I don't have the
upgrade yet, she has to buy it) any way, now time to format the hdd.
someone mentioned earlier on another NG that I should use NOT a FAT32 system
but something like NTCP....can I do this with win98, and how exactly do i do
it.

ron
 
ok the friggin cd rom is working....came unplugged from MB when I swapped
out the floppy ribbon. Still no luck on getting the system to boot.....

Ron
Click to expand...

Basically on a blank hard drive you need to make a partition active, so
you can boot from it. You then need to format it and install your OS on
it. If you search Google you should find more then enough info, but I'll
try to give you a quick run down as best as I can remember. :)

If you are installing WindowsXP, just set the Boot Device Order in the
BIOS so CD-ROM is the first device and your hard drive as the second
device (HDD-0 for drive on primary master). When you boot up with the
WinXP CD in the drive it should start up and say "press space bar to
continue" on the bottom of the screen, so press the space bar! WinXP
will then let you set the drive up from there and install windowsXP.
When it reboots (3-4 more times before it all done) with the CDrom still
in the drive don't press the space bar, just let it go and finish the
install of WinXP.

If installing Windows 98/ME with the non-bootable CD discs, set Floppy
as the first boot device in BIOS, and use the floppy that came with the
hard drive, set up the drive & format it with that( if you don't have
one you can download it from your drive maker). Or you can use a
WindowsME Start-Up disk (bootdisk.com) and run FDISK to partition the
drive and make partition 1 Active, reboot with floppy still in the drive
and the run Format to format the drive. A Windows ME start up disc will
also have a CD-ROM driver so you can install Windows/98/ME from there
(after you get the hard drive all prepared), then just stick the
Win98/Me CD in the drive and run setup.exe from the CD.

I think that's about right, it's been awhile. ;p
Ed
 
Ron said:
ok got the boot disk working....finally.....I'm loading win98 now and
upgrading to XP in a few days(this PC is for MOM and I don't have the
upgrade yet, she has to buy it) any way, now time to format the hdd.
someone mentioned earlier on another NG that I should use NOT a FAT32 system
but something like NTCP....can I do this with win98, and how exactly do i do
it.
Click to expand...

For Win98, you cannot use NTFS, so you'll have to use FAT32.
As for upgrade rules, I must direct you to MS' website.
Seems as you have gone through all "normal" problems in your initial setup,
they are very common, but trivial once you've seen them a couple of times.
 
Ron,
Wait for the WinXP CD to start installing. You'll be sorry if you
don't. The A7N266/VM board really doesn't play well with Win98. Many users
have had numerous issues with Win98/ME on this board. Just use a bootable
WinXP cd, and have the nVidia nForce Unified Driver available on another cd
as XP will need it after the first boot. I just use the unified driver
found on nVidia's website.

Good luck!
Dan
 
I'll be amazed if you can get that MB to work with 98. I tried loading 98SE
on one and after a week of assuming I had a bad MB, out of desperation, I
put XP on it. That was 6 months ago and I've only shut it off when a
software installation told me to reboot. Its never missed a beat or
crashed. In fact its easily the smoothest running machine I've ever built.
98 doesn't like the nVidia chipset and in my case it kept throwing a fit
over the sound drivers also.
 
Dan,

too late as I already installed win98.....sort of. I am having a hell
of a problem getting the darn drivers to load from the Asus MB disk!!! It
works and all, but its not finished yet....

As for XP, don't I HAVE to have win98 loaded first so I can just
upgrade?? upgrade=$100, no previous version of windows=$200 for XP........

Ron
 
Just want to say thanks for all the help........I'm aka Ron(per previous
posts) as I was posting from my brothers PC. I'm not done yet, just got
basic windows loaded and it was time to go. I spent about 8hrs. from
unpackaging, building, loading, posting all problems, blah blah blah, and
finally getting home..............whewwwwwww!! definately a rookie at
this........

Points to ponder......there is a device called "MCI"(or similar)
network adaptor(there are no adaptor cards in any slots, unless this is
integrated)that I cannot get the driver for. As I mentioned before I cannot
get a few of the drivers to run off the MB disk.....frustrating

I'd like to back up the HDD when I have just the basics configured
for my MOM. What would be the best way to do this??. I want it so that if
she does anything crazy to her PC in the future all I have to do is "load"
from a backup instead of going thru all this rigamarole again......

And lastly.......about my own homebuilt PC(built 2 years ago).
Thing keeps locking up on me, especially while browsing the internet. I
haven't a clue as to what it is. I did just download the latest security
updates from MS, and also got DirectX 9.1. It locked up before I downloaded
these items, just not as much. I was thinking maybe I should flash the bios
but I've never done that before and frankly I'm a little scared. My PC is..
Epox 8KHA+, AMD 1600+ XP, 512 RAM, SB Live 5.1! 60G HDD. Running win98 with
latest win. updates. MB was purchased around beginning of November 2001.
Thanks again for all your help....look for me posting tommorrow when I go
back to mom's to finish up :)..........

Ron
| Hello,
|
| On first power up I get message saying "boot disk failure, insert
| system disk and hit enter". I have no idea what this is. This is only my
| second PC build. The PC recognizes all drives, and all components are
new.
| Do I need to do anything to the HDD before using? Format? No OS is
| installed or anything yet. All I get on power up is the above
| message...please advise.
|
| Ron
|
|
 
The XP upgrade CD will prompt you for the old Win98 CD to verify you qualify
for the cheaper upgrade licensing. Trust me, just dump Win98 and start with
a clean format of that hard drive using XP. Skip the ASUS CD as nVidia has
much newer drivers available on www.nvidia.com
 
If you format the drive AFTER the Win98 install, you will erase the Win98
install!!! Win98 will format the drive with FAT32 because that is all it can
use unless.... 1) you have a < 2 Gig drive or....... 2) you want little 2
gig partitions (FAT16). I assume you have a drive that is larger than 2
Gigs?
You REALLY need to do some reading, search Google for "how do I install an
OS"
Here is the first return I got when I did that for you.
http://www.seagate.com/training/ata/unit4/mt6p1.html
another search on "how to build a computer" returned:
http://www.pcmech.com/byopc/index.htm Read it, learn it, live it. This is a
step by step on how to build your own computer, Learn to use the resources
that are available to you, it will make life allot easier, instead of asking
in a MOBO newsgroup for someone to hold your hand during a FIRST time
computer build. If you must have a newsgroup for questions, look at
alt.comp.hardware.pc-homebuilt, it is more along the lines of the type of
questions you are asking.
Good Luck,
Bitsbucket.
 
=|[ Kendall Herrick's ]|= said:
I'll be amazed if you can get that MB to work with 98. I tried loading 98SE
on one and after a week of assuming I had a bad MB, out of desperation, I
put XP on it. That was 6 months ago and I've only shut it off when a
software installation told me to reboot. Its never missed a beat or
crashed. In fact its easily the smoothest running machine I've ever built.
98 doesn't like the nVidia chipset and in my case it kept throwing a fit
over the sound drivers also.
Click to expand...
~Perhaps some combination of bios settings for plug'n'play and Acpi could
have helped - never sure what to do with those myself.
 
Creeping said:
=|[ Kendall Herrick's ]|= wrote:

I'll be amazed if you can get that MB to work with 98. I tried loading 98SE
on one and after a week of assuming I had a bad MB, out of desperation, I
put XP on it. That was 6 months ago and I've only shut it off when a
software installation told me to reboot. Its never missed a beat or
crashed. In fact its easily the smoothest running machine I've ever built.
98 doesn't like the nVidia chipset and in my case it kept throwing a fit
over the sound drivers also.
Click to expand...

~Perhaps some combination of bios settings for plug'n'play and Acpi could
have helped - never sure what to do with those myself.
Click to expand...

I had NT and 98SE, and now NT and W2K running on my computer at
home which is based on that motherboard. For W2K, I just
downloaded and used the all-in-one driver package from nVidia.
For NT and 98SE I separately downloaded the audio and video drivers
from C-Media and nVidia respectively.

With 98SE, the only audio-related problem I had was that WinAmp
(every version I tried) kept crashing the system and I had to
settle for using WMP. NT doesn't like WinAmp much either.

I didn't use 98SE much - I had it solely for the kids to use
when they wanted to play games since most of their games wouldn't
even install on my preferred OS: NT4. A little while back 98SE
went tits up and wouldn't boot, and rather than try to fix it I
just wiped it and installed W2K.

I couldn't get the on-board ethernet to work with NT using any
of the drivers I found - it wasn't worth spending a lot of time
on when I already had a PCI card that I knew would work.
 
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