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Start up problems..

R

romero

Weaksauce
Joined
Jul 4, 2008
Messages
74
I built my first computer about 2 weeks ago but have noticed a problem. When i turn the computer on it shows the motherboard screen and stays there for approx 15-20 seconds. Then it goes into a black screen stating that I need to "Reboot & Select proper boot device or insert boot media in selected boot device and press a key."

I am a bit confused on what this means. If I restart the computer while it shows the message it starts up with no problems. What can I do to have this message no appear as I power on my computer? Also during the shift from one screen to another, the screen blinks in green and other colors. What can this be? Can it be that I have my LCD TV connected to my computer with a DVI to HDMI cable?

Besides these issues, everything seems to run great, no overheating at all.
 
Unplug any USB pens / hard drives, it may be trying to boot one of them instead.
Also USB hard drvies can cause boot freezing on POST, I have one that does this and a friend has one that slows his boot down.
We have to unplug the drive before booting and plug it back in after.

Failing that, if you have more than one hard drive, it might be booting the wrong one.
Pull the other drive out and see if it boots.
If it does, put the other drive back in, this will reset the boot order in the CMOS (you can change it yourself manually if you wish).

See if that improves the green flashing screen too.
 
Q9450 processor
4GB ddr2 800 ram
200gb HD

I use a wireless mouse, maybe that can be a problem with the USB receiver? I will try plugging it in to the back instead of the top USB ports. I went into BIOS before i got the prompt and there was no sign of a HD.
 
I went into BIOS before i got the prompt and there was no sign of a HD.
Click to expand...
You might try unplugging and reconnecting the cables on the HD end and the motherboard end. If that doesn't fix the problem, I'd try new cables, just to rule out that possibility.
 
also I would try to boot from a cd and put a hard drive diagnostic on it. I actually am not sure of any off hand though :(

There's testdisk but I'm not sure if that does general drive testing, it can rebuild the boot sector if it can find a backup though. It's all command based though so if you want a gui I recommend you build a bart disc. If you can boot up into a pre-installed environment you can then see if you can at least access the info on your drive but before you go that far I agree with Drew that you should check out the cables first.
 
Try using a different SATA port.
You might be using an included RAID controller, these can have more go wrong with their config.
The basic SATA ports tend to work reliably.
 
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