Building my first PC - first questions!

[autolycus]

Firstly, thanks to novatech for a really quick delivery.

Everything seems to be here, althogh the keyboard is not the correct one - it's the octigen slim keyboard, as opposed to the standard NOV-KBPS2B that i ordered.

Anyway, i seem to fallen at the first hurdle - i can't get the ANT-SON3 Antec Sonata III case open! The instructions say "unlock the side panel", but unfortunately i can't find a key anywhere. Am i being thick or is the key missing? Needless to say, I'm a bit stuck till i get the case open. Can anyone help. please?

[Jonny2Bad]

There should be a small key like with a round end in with all your screws and bits you got with the case!!

[autolycus]

Yeah, thanks, i had another go and worked the latch i thought was locked - keys inside case :-)

[Jonny2Bad]

Ah sorted keep at it and be patient, and enjoy it as it is great fun when you get into it!! Good luck come back if you get stuck

[autolycus]

Thanks for your interest. I'm struggling a bit with how to locate some of the m/b i/outputs with a a little metal frame that came with the m/b and which i think i've installed correctly in the case. But there are lots of little tabs and i'm not sure how they locate in the usb s etc. I assume that some of them at least are bent around finally. Absolutely nothing in the m/b manual or the case manual even mentions them :-( Don't want to screw in the m/b till i've worked out where these tabs go exactly.

[Jonny2Bad]

Yes arent they a pain in the backside? Just check that you have it the right way up and round and i personally have any tabs that arent in the way of the ports just resting in place no need to change them and as long as they arent in the way you shouldnt have any probs. Try sliding the mobo into place b4 connecting anything and go from there

[autolycus]

Glad it's not just me. I lifted a couple of the prongs with my fingers as i slid the m/b f/wire ports underneath them. It didn't feel too brutal, and everything seemed fit reasonably OK after that. Recon i'll force myself off to bed now or i'll be up till 3.00am at least!

[autolycus]

Well there's been a delay while the damaged MOBO went back to Novatech, but now everything seems to be bolted together and i seem to have installed XP OK, except that it seems to have recognised one of my 250GB drives as 127MB and hasn't picked up my second hdd at all - according to "My Computer". Now i've tried to install the asus drivers from the cd and the pc won't reboot. It says

Bad or missing command interpreter
Enter the full shell command line:
command.com /P /E:256

Help. What do i do now please?

[Coops]

Does your Windows XP CD have SP2 Built in. This sounds like you have a very old Windows XP CD. Can you confirm how old the CD is.

[Jonny2Bad]

Yes its def a older xp cd anything b4 xp sp2 will not recognise a hdd over 130g so sp2 is needed to find the rest of the hdd, but not sure it would cause the other prob you seem to have!!

[autolycus]

yeah, i gave up on my old copy of xp and installed xp sp2. No problem withdrives after disk management and format etc. But the same problem occurs when i try to insatll the asus drivers. I'm emailing them to see if they can tell me what's going wrong.

[Jonny2Bad]

have you downloaded the latest drivers? and try to update the drivers 1 by 1 to find out which driver it is hanging on

[autolycus]

Her's a copy of the email that explains in a bit more depth in case anyone on the forum can make head or tail of what's going on:

I've just built a computer based on this motherboard. After installing XP SP2 i nsert the asus drivers disk and select ASUS InstAll - Installation wizard for drivers - install drivers automatically...
It takes several minutes and then goes to reboot, but stalls with a message that starts:

1. HD System Type - (00)

and then goes on about kernel compatibility, mentions someone called Pasquale Villani and the FreeDOS project then a load of other stuff and finishes:

Bad or missing command interpreter
Enter the full shell command line:
command.com /P /E:256

Then i have to switch off reboot in safe mode do a system restore AFTER removing the asus disc (or it just goes back to the same spot) and then i'm back to square one.
Can you help please?

Oh, and how do i find the serial number of this MOBO without the box - your website does not tell me.

[autolycus]

If i just remove the cd and reboot it asks for the disk again in windows and tells me status is completed!!

[Jonny2Bad]

1st things 1st i would install the drivers seperately, and then find out whats working and not!!

[Danc1978]

what motherabord is it?

[autolycus]

Yeah, thanks for the input. i'm dowloading the latest drivers right now and i'll reinstal windows and do as you suggest. I really would have thought their cd would have worked tho'. There appeared to be only 2 sets of drivers on the cd - nvidia chipset and sound card, but several more on the website including bios etc

[autolycus]

P5N32-E SLI

[Jonny2Bad]

any luck with the installing of the drivers separately?

[autolycus]

Thanks for the interest j2b. It seemed to go OK, tho it didn't always seem obvious exactly what i was installing. Once i had the asus disk in the reader during a reboot - can't exactly remember why - and the same thing happened. So it seems obvious there's some bug on the disk. Unfortunately, having installed the asus audio drivers and the ATI graphics drivers, i seem to have lost all sound at some point. Although if i check with the soundmax app (not sure where that came from, part of the asus audio drivers i think) it plays a sound and pronounces my system working fine! but i can't get any sound out of any a/v app. Not sure where to go with this problem. bu ti need to get some stuff done today after all the hours spent getting this far yesterday. No reply from asus BTW.

[autolycus]

Got over the sound problem - i think the ATI had hijacked it . Anyway i got into the soundmax settings (right click on header - multimedia) and changed the default device from ATI HD audio rear output to soundmax HD audio and it works fine. More incompetent questions to follow i'm sure...

[Jonny2Bad]

Right so your getting there then now, at least the drivers are going in now! And your on your way to getting your new build up and running oh what joy lol!!!!!! Makes me want to build something he he!!!

[autolycus]

Yes, it's quite fun when it goes right, isn't it? If the asus drivers cd had worked properly, i'd have built it and been online in a couple of hours. But aa a novice, you tend to think you must have done something wrong yourself. The video encodes about 3x the speed i'm used to and doesn't slow at all if i multitask. I'm getting some slightly strange artefacts on some websites i visit - like graphics smudging, particularly when i use the scroll wheel, and i'm sure i'll have one or two more queries before it all "beds in". But an overall satisfying experience and thanks for all the interest and help so far.

[autolycus]

Well it is getting a bit irritating now. Several websites, including ebay and hotmail seem to lose a line of graphics when i scroll up and down, or sometimes when i don't do anything the page opens and after i scroll up and down, further images appera. Sometimes it all smudges or i get a line of black say along a line of buttons. Never had this before. Is it a problem with the graphics card perhaps?

[Jonny2Bad]

what gfx card you have? and have you the most up 2 date driver for it?

[autolycus]

Thanks for the advice. I had actually downloaded the latest drivers meantime and the problem seems to have disappeared. Don't know why these companies send out CDs with their products that don't work or instal software that doesn't work properly. Oh well...The bad news is i've hooked up the tv and can't seem to get the movies to display properly. It's an ATI Radeon HD 2400 PRO and I've emailed support to see if they can can get it to work. Also getting probs d/l from my humax via USB - it worked perfectly yesterday before i channelled all the wires and installed the PC in position, which is typical i guess.

I thought the extra ethernet socket might allow me to network my old PC for the time being, but after following all the instructions in windows xp i can't seem to share files or internet connection. Perhaps the extra socket is for something else, tho' i can't imagine what. It's quite a learning experience.

[Jonny2Bad]

What firewall are you using? And have you run the wizard on both pc's with the correct settings?

[autolycus]

I'm using zonealarm, with the XP firewall turned off. But it seems during the network set up procedure that windows turns it back on again. The process completes on both machines with no error messages. It's just that ultimately there is no sharing - internet or files - between the two machines.

[Jonny2Bad]

have you checked the setting in zone alarm for the networking?

[autolycus]

I'm not sure how i'd do that. Usually there's an alert from ZA if there's any activity. There's nothing obvious (to me) in the list of programs. (this is the the free version of ZA BTW)

[Jonny2Bad]

not too sure about za tbh but there might be a setting somewhere on network managment that could be wrong try and have a look thru and see