New M/B & CPU - a few niggles

[ferret]

Got a nice new Epox 8RDA3I m/b and Athlon 2500+ cpu last Sunday.

After a bit of mucking around it is all up and running but I have a few minor problems I could use some help with. I'm running windows 98se and it is not a fresh install. I want to keep some programs i don't have disks for.

1) No sound on games, through media player etc but can play cds with cd player. Device manager says everything is cool with on-board sound. Media player says "operation cannot be performed because the pins are not connected" assume this means lead from cd player to m/b cd in - but it is all properly connected.

2) No power on, HDD lights etc on the pc case. All leads seem to be properly connected to m/b.

3) Hangs during shut down after pc has been on for a while. After short sessions (including on internet) no problem shutting down. After say 30mins+ on internet wont shut down (haven't tried 30mins+ without internet

I think there must be simple answers to these - but I can't find them yet!!

[thronka]

Quit copying me!

[John Prophet]

so how did you go about installing it? if you didnt delete all the old hardware entries you probably have a lot of doubled entries and conflicts in device manager....

in device manager is it showing more than one entry for sound stuff?

are there a lot of yellow exclams in there also??

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usuall what you do to try to install a new mobo without redoing windows is....put in the new board...reboot to SAFE MODE...run regedit...delete the "hkey local machine/enum" folder. Just delete the whole folder itself and then reboot into windows and it will start detecting all the hardware again.

this is similar to just going into the device manager and removing every single item, lol.

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if u just slap in the new board and DONT do the delete enum folder step...you end up with all sorts of conflicts and things...and lots of times it wont even boot....and then you end up with what microsoft calls a "less than ideal user experience" lol


if that is the case you can still just do the regedit remove of the enum folder and redetect everything....or just reinstall windows from within windows (not formatting in other words) and see if that does the trick.

JP

[ferret]

Did the safe mode, run regedit, delete hkey... bit when I set it up.

It was not all smooth sailing. Had to do a number of start ups with different hardware being found. I have 2 entries for DMA controller and 1 has the yellow exclam and says it couldn't locate the device driver. I've tried reloading drivers, deleting this hardware etc but can't get this to go away.

Also have yellow question mark for PCI Universal Serial Bus. I don't need my old PCI USB card on the new M/b, so I didn't fit it. I've done remove hardware for this, but each time I boot up after, it seems to find it still and do the bad install. I wasn't really worried about this unless it is contributing to my other problems.

I also have multiple entries for the following, but each time I remove them they come back. No yellows. Are they meant to be multiple entries?
Motherboard resources
Nvidia Nforce2 Memory Controller
PCI standard PCI-PCI bridge

[John Prophet]

Yeah, its never smooth sailing..it takes a few reboots etc

I always get doubled entries on keyboard, mouse, dma controlelr and a few other things..which you then have to delete both entries and let it find them just once again etc.

Im not sure about the nforce stuff....but after you run the driver cd it should sraighten all that up I would think.

JP

[ferret]

So any idea on the sound? Thats the one i have to get sorted!

[John Prophet]

so no wave sounds?

if you right click the vol control and click "open volume controls" is there anything muted in there? or are there some vol sliders pulled all the way down? Is there an entry for "wave" sounds?

[ferret]

When I click on volume control - nothing happens! It wont open.

Like I said, I can play cds with cdplayer so it is not the speakers unplugged or something stupid like that. All devices show up as working properly and drivers as properly installed.

I've searched but cant find out what is meant by the "No pins connected" error message that windows media player giives me.

This is starting to bug me, cant play games without sound!

Could something be faulty with the motherboard? Anyone got any ideas?

[roley]

Remember that without clean install...you need to uninstall everything religiously...

At that point, I would stop and run something like Regmechanic or something to fix all the registry entry errors...

Then after that resume all the new driver installations.

Then for Win98SE I love Norton Utilities 2002...some people reckon it is shite...but I have fixed so many issues with it...particularly lost clusters and stuff like that ....it does do registry cleaning but not as good as reg mechanic...just make sure to do a custom install and leave things like norton recycle bin, image and system doctor off...they are well meaning but annoying extras.

Just Note that on modern mobos...if you do not connect the audio cables...you should have option to enable digital output on the drives...this will transmit the audio via the ribbon cables...I have only done this in XP so far...but it should work in 98SE I think.

So long as you did everything right in the way of handling the mobo, not dropping it or putting magnetized screwdrivers next to it and all that stuff...I would be surprised if it had probs...people think that hardware is soft...but it is surprisingle tough. Software on the other hand is so complex that it usually always causes more config issues etc...

So look for software stuff if there is no obvious damage to the board...

All the best

Rohan