i'm still having trouble here with my pc..... i got a new motherboard and cpu(i think??:confused: ) and i thought i may as well go and buy vista too.....

but my hard drive has gone funny(before i even tried to install vista!!)

where are those little jumper thingies supposed to go.... what does cs mean??

i've got 1 hard drive which is on ide port 0, and a dvd rom and a dvd writer which are both on port 1 if that makes any sense??:confused: .......

i wish i' just taken a club hammer to the whole thing now and bought a whole new computer rather than trying to save a few squids.

oh yeah, what is PCI express when it's at home???? it was ISA in my day... long live the 386!!!!

oh one more thing??

what are those little red connectors for?? they are really small, and there's two of them next to the ide ribbon connector

*last seen heading for the tool shed to polish up my pick axe*

ok.

your drives are IDE using the 80 way flat spaghetti cable

CS stands for cable select.

With IDE, you can have 2 devices on one cable, a "master" and a "slave" device. You set this up with the jumpers. So if you want to have two drives, you need to set one to master and the other to slave. If you're too lazy to decide on whether to use master or slave, you can have it set to cable select. Personally, I've always defined a master and slave to avoid any possible confusion.

You'll need to look at the hard drive settings to determine how to put the jumpers so that the drive is set to master or slave according to what the other hard drive on the same cable is set to.

PCIe or PCI express is a new bus type. Each PCIe slot can have a different length to it. Normally, the longest ones are for the latest graphics cards which use what's called a 16 lane slot. You can get much shorter slots which start at the edge of the motherboard but don't move so far in if that makes sense. These will be 4 or single lane (depending on length) and some network cards amongst other devices use these.

TBH, at the moment, I wouldn't worry about PCIe too much - there aren't many PCIe cards a consumer would have a use for

There should be a legend somewhere nearby which will tell you how to use the jumpers - the normal options are; Master, Slave or cable select (cs).

If only one device is on the port i.e. your hard drive as you describe - it should work as master or slave. If you wanted to add another device onto that port e.g. another hard drive you would need to make sure they werent both master or both slave - that wouldnt work. the drive the machine boots off should be the master. PCI express is simply a development of pci and is about 15 times faster special cards needed.

It will not work off cs (cable select - this was an idea used by IBM where they twist some of the wires within the ide lead so that the lead defined master and slave when the drives were both set as master by the jumpers).

If you still have trouble post a pic of the red jumpers.

If the cdrom and dvd writer havent been touched - leave them alone if they worked before they will probably work ok when the machine boots normally.

i havn't changed any of the settings on the jumpers since i took the old board out so theoretically it should still work..... i've checked them all and the hard disc is set to master

and dvd rom is set to master, and the writer is slave

right.... the manual says that the red connectors are SATA, that are they for?? there is a pair of leads stashed in the box which look kind of similar to a ribbon cable but they look like they may plug in those connectors

Sata is a new interface - if you had a sata hard drive or cdrom etc you would use these connectors and cables. If you dont have any such devices leave them alone.

The next thing I would do is to connect your hard drive by itself i.e. disconnect the second ide cable - disconnect any other ancilliary items you have connected -

If you have just the processor, ram, video card and hard drive only connected it should try and boot up - if not take note of any messages you see.

If nothing at all seen on screen - it's likely that your processor isn't running, you can disconnect your hard drive and try again so now only having motherboard, proc, ram and videocard- if nowt on screen let me know the make and model of old and new motherboards and the processor so I can try and check compatibility of processor and ram.

Check the BIOS, see if your motherboard can detect all your drives (HDD, DVD etc). If the chipset of your new motherboard is different to your old motherboard, you might not able to boot into your existing Windows.

i'm still having trouble here with my pc..... i got a new motherboard and cpu(i think??:confused: ) and i thought i may as well go and buy vista too.....

but my hard drive has gone funny(before i even tried to install vista!!)

where are those little jumper thingies supposed to go.... what does cs mean??

i've got 1 hard drive which is on ide port 0, and a dvd rom and a dvd writer which are both on port 1 if that makes any sense??:confused: .......

i wish i' just taken a club hammer to the whole thing now and bought a whole new computer rather than trying to save a few squids.

oh yeah, what is PCI express when it's at home???? it was ISA in my day... long live the 386!!!!

First question is did you buy a new power supply for the new motherboard, and if not what rating is the one you have?

And answers :

CS is cable select. Some controllers play funny beggers on that setting with certain hard discs. Best thing to do is to set it to master on the HDD. Set the DVD writer to master and the DVD ROM to slave.

PCI Express (PCIe) in the 1.0 Revision is a serial replacement for PCI and PCI-X based on serial architecture. The underlying hardware and protocol is completely different, however the first set of registers is the same as a PCI card so you don't need special drivers unless you want to take advantage of PCIe specific features.

PCI was a parallel multi-drop bus, where as PCIe creates dedicated point to point links and supports only one device per slot without an inteligent switching device.

A single PCIe lane transfers a 2Gb/s Payload (2.5Gb/s RAW) and these are combined to make wider slots. The payload is 8/10ths of the RAW throughput due to the encoding system used.

Slots can be x1, x4, x8, x16 and x32, and multiply the payload accordingly, eg x4 is 8Gb/s payload (10Gb/s RAW).

Although x32 is in the spec it has not been used anywhere as yet.

A narrower card can be used in a wider slot, but not vice versa.

PCIe devices can have multiple formats that use the same principle for connectivity.

PCI-SIG - Home - This is the standards body website if you are bored or interested.

PCIe 2.0 has just been released which effectively DDRs the link, and so raises a single link up to 5.0Gb/s RAW, or a 4Gb/s payload.

You did ask

Oh and if you get stuck and need a hand, I am just around the corner

thanks for the info guys.. i think i've sorted it now, i temporarily removed the hard disc to make it easier to get to the cables for the usb port on the front.........

swmbo has just confessed that she accidently knocked it off the bookshelf when i was out..... it's making a horrible rattly sound like a cabassa now:rolleyes:

looks like it's another trip to novatech today then:)

is it worth buying a SATA one?? are they faster??

Yes Tom,

Get a SATA 2 drive, that supports native command queueing (NCQ) with at least an 8MB on board cache.

360GB drives iirc are at the best price point and personally i prefer segate or WD drives myself.

360GB drives iirc are at the best price point and personally i prefer segate or WD drives myself.

Well they are only the best price point if you actually need 360 gb. Not saying he dosen't, but personally I have never exceeded 60GB use on my PC.

ISA, 386? Tom. You will be talking DOS next!

Stick it all in the bin and go get an iMac

yep, buying an imac would certainly get rid of all those pesky "upgrade" issues...

i got a 60gb sata II drive from novatech for £27 in the end..... i cant imagine ever needing 60gb, it's all up and running now too, it only took about 15 miniutes to install vista, and it worked first time without any trouble..... well impressed with vista so far

What make was the drive Tom, not a Maxtor was it?

What make was the drive Tom, not a Maxtor was it?

cheap cheep

cheap cheep

Hope you've got a good backup regime.

nah, i'll just throw it away and buy another one if it goes wrong

Was it a 1 or 3 year warrenty one, I'm guessing 1 year from design age dictated by the size

So long as I cancel the recommended disc check every time i boot up the lap top it seems to run fine, if it is allowed to check disc it finds all sorts of faults and takes about 5 hours, then starts to check empty space, last time i left it for over 24 hours and it was only 36% complete:eek:, mind you punching it rather hard in a mad ig at its speed or lack of may have something to do with this:D oh yes and it was dropped on the floor a few times as well , glad to know i at least hurt the peice of **** though:D. and if the disc check is cancelled it actually runs faster and better than it did before result, think I should go to work in IT :lol:

yep :iagree: you cant beat the old 'percussive adjustment'