Noob at reformating Hardrive, Help

Catsonar

Catsonar

[H]ard|Gawd
Joined
Oct 3, 2003
Messages
1,886
ok, i had purchased a computer at this store for about $45, came with everything except the hardrive, I finally got a hardrive for it but I was told that i needed to reformat before the computer would even boot, can anyone help me. I searched on the web, and i seemed to have found sites on how to do this, but i rather ask my brothers here at hardforums, because I recieved so much help from people here( thx for that). Can anyone help. thx
 
Most any OS you might install will have a formatting utility built into the install process.
Go into BIOS, make sure the CD-ROM drive is one of the boot devices, then install 2000/XP or whatever you have. One of the first steps in the process will be formatting the drive. XP or 2000 will let you format with either FAT32 or NTFS. NTFS is better, but cannot be read by 9X/ME Microsoft operating systems.
Depending on the size of the drive, the process could take some time. XP has a quick format option, but for a first time format you might think about doing a full format.

Incidentally, what kind of system did you end up with for $45?
 
Well, for $45 i got a PSU 300watt, Asus AV7 mobo, PNY 64mb ram, AMD Athlon 800Mhz, Creative 48x cd-rom drive, 3.5 floppy, Antec case, and added( just to get started) a 2.3 Gb hardrive.

When I turn the Computer on it doesn't respond to anything, and the monitor is blank, I put a Nvidia geforce FX 5200 but I need to install drivers first, and even before that the OS. i"m not sure if the CD-rom is even hooked up right, the connection goes from the CD-rom to the hardrive to the mobo, and even then I'm not sure if the cable is in the right place on the mobo. I'm doing this blind since i don't have the user's manual of this board, tried looking for it on the web, coulndn' find it, this is just a huge mess I tell you. But I really appreciate you willing to help, for i would really like to do this on my own and not depend on other people to do this for me.

PS: it has a Via chipset, thx once again
 
If it doesnt display anything on the monitor, something is wrong with the board or the hookup.
Does the motherboard have integrated video?
If so there should be a connector at the back of motherboard to which you should connect the monitor.
Pull the AGP card if there is integrated video until you can get into BIOS to set AGP as default.

It sounds like you have the hard drive set as a "slave" on the same cable as the CD-ROM.

You dont want to do that, not only are the hard drive jumpers almost surely set for master mode, but the CD-ROMs jumpers may be set to slave mode. Reverse their relative positions on the cable - the hard drive should be connected to the connector at the very end of the cable, and the optical drive to the connector in the middle.

Make sure the hard drive jumpers are in the 'master' position and the optical drives in the 'slave' position before you do this.

Ideally, you'd connect the drives to different IDE channels and set them both to be masters, but it sounds like you dont have an extra cable.

BTW, you cant install drivers for anything until you have the OS installed.
 
It doesn't come with intergrated video( I messed up with the mobos name it's the A7V), and i think I found the manual on google, not sure though. I'll keep messing with it, i'll post if anything comes up. thx
 
I think that this board doesn't even have bios, in this situation what can I do. I forgot to mention that the round battery on the mobo didn't come with the mobo, I had to put one in, doesn't that erase CMOS? Thx for the link:)
 
It's got to have a BIOS, they come from the factory with them already on there. Removing the battery will just cause the board to "forget" the specific user settings in the BIOS, not kill the BIOS altogether.

It's possible the clear CMOS jumper has been left in the "Clear" position, and that would definitely need to be moved back to it's normal position to get it to boot.

Barring that and several other things, it sounds like a dead board or PSU (does the PSU fan or system fan spin up when you press the power button?).
edited for spelling and clarification
 
Yeah when I power it up the PSU fan is spinning normally, like it should,i downloaded the bios from the link you gave me,, now should I just put the floppy in and power it?
 
The BIOS on a floppy isnt necessary. If there is no video out when you press the power button, putting a BIOS file on a floppy will not change that.
If there is no video out, something is wrong, which is why I mentioned checking the clear CMOS jumper. You might also want to swap in a different video card or check that the RAM is completely inserted.
 
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