Look in your mobo's manual and reset the cmos jumper with the power unplugged from the wall. That should reset all the bios options to their default settings, which hopefully enables the keyboard (I assume you have a USB keyboard) upon bootup.
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LeonardoWake up and smell the glaciersEagle River, AlaskaIcrontian
edited January 2006
There will be an option in the BIOS to set USB keyboard and USB mouse to operating system or BIOS. You want BIOS, so that in the future your USB input will work before you get to Windows. Your manual should show exactly where and exactly what this option is called in the BIOS.
I have a gig of ram. Would a newer HD have a quicker access speed?
Maybe... it depends on how slow your current drive is. Do you know the model?
Another thing to consider is how clean your install of Windows is. If a lot of programs are trying to load at boot time, it slows things down considerably.
Have a look under device manager for IDE controller properties. Make sure it is set to DMA. I built one and the HDD had set to PIO mode and it was a lot slower until I changed it.
How do I get to the start menu to disable programs that start on re-boot?
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LeonardoWake up and smell the glaciersEagle River, AlaskaIcrontian
edited January 2006
Start button -> Run -> type "msconfig" -> select OK -> select STARTUP. Remove checkboxes from all items that you don't want to automatically start up. Ensure that you know what they are before unselecting. If unsure, do an internet search with the exact wording found and you find the answer.
Another way is to do this is download and install RegCleaner. It has several registry cleaning/program removal functions, including startup program changing. It's one of my favorite Windows maintenance tools.
Another problem: My CD drives are not being seen in My Computer and do not work when trying to run software. This just started last night. Whats going on? Also my USB connections on top of the case do not work and I have connected them to the USB spots on the MB. Any suggestions?
Another problem: My CD drives are not being seen in My Computer and do not work when trying to run software. This just started last night. Whats going on? Also my USB connections on top of the case do not work and I have connected them to the USB spots on the MB. Any suggestions?
Your motherboard chipset drivers may not be working properly. Give them an uninstall/reinstall and see if that works.
If the drives aren't being detected in the BIOS it's nothing to do with your chipset drivers, it's something to do with how the drives are configured or connected to the motherboard. First off I need to know if you hard drives are IDE or SATA (I don't think you ever answered that, apologies if you did) as the instructions I'm going to give you will be different for each case. I realise that your problem is with your CD drives, but if your hard drive(s) are IDE then how your CD drives are connected will be different than if your hard drive(s) are SATA. so, are your hard drive(s) SATA or IDE?
You might want to double-check the BIOS to make sure the drives are being recognized there. As deicist said, the chipset drivers could only have something to do with it if it's Windows that doesn't recognize them, if the BIOS does.
The HDDs are IDE and are connected to the primary IDE spot on the MB. The CDROM drives are both on the same cable (secondary port on MB), with the Master at the end and the other off the middle. In BIOS, the 2 HDDs are recognized in the general page as master and slave, but there is "none" showing for the secondary master/slave.
On a side note, is there an advantage to SATA drives?
Just for now, disconnect the Secondary Slave drive. This should leave you with only one optical drive on the Secondary IDE Channel, operating as the Master drive. Then see if the drive is detected properly.
If that doesn't work, disconnect that drive and hook the other optical drive up as the Secondary Master and try again.
Are the jumpers definately set correctly on the CD Drives? Just to check, there's little plastic jumpers on the back of the drives which need to be to set to 'Master' and 'Slave' appropriately.
We're jammin now. The 2nd drive was indeed misjumpered so i moved it to slave and it works Cool.
One last issue is with my USB hub. Its will power up things that get inserted but the computer will not recognize it. I have an external HD, an Ipod etc that will work if plugged directly into the computer but not thru the hub. It did work with the old machine.
Try connecting the hub to a different port, like one of the ones actually mounted on the motherboard rather than connected via an internal cable, sounds like the port you have the hub connected to could be faulty, rather than the hub itself.
Comments
If he has one handy.:)
One more question: I installed an AMD 64bit 3700+ cpu and windows doesn't seem to boot any faster. Is that normal? Wheres the speed?
The boot times are more dependent upon the hard disk access speed and amount of RAM. The CPU speed comes in handy in gaming, folding, rendering, etc.
Maybe... it depends on how slow your current drive is. Do you know the model?
Another thing to consider is how clean your install of Windows is. If a lot of programs are trying to load at boot time, it slows things down considerably.
Another way is to do this is download and install RegCleaner. It has several registry cleaning/program removal functions, including startup program changing. It's one of my favorite Windows maintenance tools.
EDIT---yossarian: I merged a similar thread of yours on this same subject. It will help everyone by having all the steps you've tried in one thread.
Another problem: My CD drives are not being seen in My Computer and do not work when trying to run software. This just started last night. Whats going on? Also my USB connections on top of the case do not work and I have connected them to the USB spots on the MB. Any suggestions?
Your motherboard chipset drivers may not be working properly. Give them an uninstall/reinstall and see if that works.
OK I fixed the USB problem but the CDROM drives are still invisible....
How do I rest the mobo chipset drivers?
On a side note, is there an advantage to SATA drives?
If that doesn't work, disconnect that drive and hook the other optical drive up as the Secondary Master and try again.
Either the Slave drive is misjumpered, defective, or your cable is bad.
For the time being, I would try booting from your WinXP CD and see if you can get your installation going.
Good Luck!
One last issue is with my USB hub. Its will power up things that get inserted but the computer will not recognize it. I have an external HD, an Ipod etc that will work if plugged directly into the computer but not thru the hub. It did work with the old machine.