Built a new PC and have some questions... (1 Viewer)

[Rob Varto]

I just finished building my new PC. Core 2 Duo w/ an Asus P5N-E SLI mobo and 2 gigs of ram. Unfortunately, the bios screen takes forever to load. It literally takes 30 seconds to get away from the "press DEL to enter BIOS" screen and another 30 seconds to load XP. What gives? I've searched thru the BIOS to see if I could cut down the load time, but no luck.

Also, Im having a heck of a time getting connected to the internet (typing this from another computer). I keep getting the "limited connectivity" message from my network connection. I tried calling Comcast, but they were no help. It seems that my ethernet doesn't want to accept the default IP address. Is that normal?

Anyone have any advice on how to handle these two issues?

Thanks in advance!

 

[Brian Sharp]

Rob,

I don't know if it is a feature of the Asus boards but, having had Gigabyte motherboards in my previous computers, the load up time seemed noticeably slower. Just under 20 secs to load the bios, 1min 10secs to clear the Windows "Welcome" screen and 1 min 45 secs until I can use the computer. I wondered if the slow load of Windows was due to the extra ram (1.5gb) wity extra items loading at start. I have just accepted the situation; turn on the computer, have a coffee and then set to work!

With regard to the internet have you loaded the latest LAN drivers from Asus?

Brian

Asus A8VM
1.5gb RAM
Geforce 6200 Graophics
AMD single core 3800 processor

 

[Rob Varto]

No, I tried to get the latest BIOS and drivers last night but the website was down. I'll try again today.

Thanks for the info!

 

[TimDoss]

I don't know the exact options, but in your bios look for options for
quickboot and an option to turn off POST (power on self test)

 

[Brian Sharp]

Rob,

One other thought. Do you have the newer ATA hard drive (thin lightweight cable to motherboard) or the older IDE (flat cable about 2" wide to motherboard) hard drive.
I just have an ATA drive and the computer spends quite a while looking for an IDE master (holds on the second screen just prior to loading windows) before it gives up and carries on with the boot up.
Not found a solution for this (sure there must be one out there somewhere!) but just learnt to live with it.

Brian

 

[Rob Varto]

Im still using the older IDE cable. The BIOS finds my hard drives and DVD drives immediately... it just takes a while to boot. I mostly leave my computer on anyways, but I was surprised how long it took.

Brian, have you ever installed a SATA drive? This is my first time using one and Im not exactly clear on how it works. Like I said, my BIOS sees it instantly, but it shows up as a USB multimedia device in the lower RH corner of my screen (it's almost like you can shut it down like you would a thumb drive). Im working on getting the latest drivers, but shouldn't the SATA drive just show up like any other hard drive? Would it not show up as an F: drive for example?

Thanks again!

 

[Kimmo Jaskari]

SATA drives are hotpluggable and you can indeed remove one as your computer is running. Of course, removing your only boot drive won't be good, but you can easily have an external SATA connector on your computer and plug hard drives in there like they were USB drives (except SATA is much faster.)

If you can't see the drive as a partition, go to the Control Panel and Administrative Tools and run the Computer Management tool. There you can find your drives, assign drive letters and partition/format them.

 

[Rob Varto]

Thanks Kimmo!

At this point (aside from setting up my Sata drive), everything is going ok except I keep getting the "limited connectivity" message from my network connection. I can send data, but I cannot receive it! I d/l the latest drivers from Asus, but no luck.

Im thinking of going to buy an ethernet card today and disabling the onboard one. Anyone have any ideas why I'd only be able to send data but not receive it? And no, I don't have a firewall installed yet and I've tried the connection with and without my router.

Thanks!

 

[Brian Sharp]

Might be worth a look at:

Start>Control Panel>System>Hardware>Device Manager>Network Adapter

Then click on the + sign alongside the Network Adapter to open it and then right click on your network adapter and select "Properties".

This should bring up a screen where about half way down there is a box with device status. It should say the device is working properly. If not there is a trouble shooting option.

Also are there any options for LAN ethernet in the Bios setup?

Good luck!

Brian

 

[Kimmo Jaskari]

Limited connectivity can also be a sign that there is no DHCP server issuing the machine an IP address. Have you tried assigning it an IP number manually?

Also found this via a quick google: http://www.pchell.com/support/limitedconnectivity.shtml

 

[Rob FM]

Thanks Kimmo!

At this point (aside from setting up my Sata drive), everything is going ok except I keep getting the "limited connectivity" message from my network connection. I can send data, but I cannot receive it! I d/l the latest drivers from Asus, but no luck.

Im thinking of going to buy an ethernet card today and disabling the onboard one. Anyone have any ideas why I'd only be able to send data but not receive it? And no, I don't have a firewall installed yet and I've tried the connection with and without my router.

Thanks!

Is everything running good now?

 

[David Norman]

Given his 14yr hiatus on HTF I'm going to guess there was an issue that he still hasn;t cleaned up

 

[DaveF]

If he’s still struggling, I could loan him my 2007 Core 2 Duo MacBook Pro. It works fine and would give him similarly maybe better, performance to his current system.

 

[Jason Goodmanson]

I had to laugh at the 2gigs of RAM spec . . . my how computers have changed.

At the risk of dating myself, my first PC build was a 386sx (no math co-processor here!!) carried a mere 1mb of RAM (back when RAM was $100 per meg.)

I just built a new system a few weeks ago and I put 32gb in. THIRTY. TWO. GIGABYTES.

 

[David Norman]

I had to laugh at the 2gigs of RAM spec . . . my how computers have changed.

At the risk of dating myself, my first PC build was a 386sx (no math co-processor here!!) carried a mere 1mb of RAM (back when RAM was $100 per meg.)

I just built a new system a few weeks ago and I put 32gb in. THIRTY. TWO. GIGABYTES.

SImilar -- my first 386 purchase in 1991(?) I had to beg the guy to put 2mb in instead of the 1 he suggested
1200 baud modem and I thought that was massive speed since my only prior online experience was with a 100 or 300 C64/C128.

I remember downloading Compuserve forums for offline reading, except I could read teh posts as they were downloading without a problem. Then 2400 and the massive jump to 12800 where the posts just flew past my eyes.

 

[Jason Goodmanson]

Kids today won't appreciate having to figure IRQ and COM options. I still remember the first time I worked with a plug and play modem. What do you mean it just worked? I won't have to change the IRQ on my Sound Blaster card and then the COM on my CD-ROM drive?

 

[kalm_traveler]

I'm mostly done building a reverse-sleeper retro desktop for some old games... Pentium III 1.13ghz, 512mb PC-133 SDRAM, 120gb SATA SSD (yes that's right, PCI SATA raid controller that works in Windows 98SE and 2k!), IDE DVD burner, USB 2.0 and 3.0 cards (the 3.0 is a PCI-E 1x card in a PCIE-> PCI adapter), Aureal Vortex 2 sound card, Nvidia Quadro 900 XGL AGP graphics card.

Windows 2000 Pro seems to be pretty stable, but 98SE is very finicky. I swapped from a 20 year old no-name power supply to a new Corsair 1200w and now 98 won't boot claiming some kernel error. Ah nostalgia