PCTech Forums

Hey guys.

Ok so good and bad news.

Both the 1TB hard drive and the new psu turned up yesterday, so this morning i figure i will wack the bad boy hard drive in and format it whilst im at work (apparently it takes hours!!). Well, typically the psu i am using atm only has two sata connections. So i didn’t really want to do this before work, but i had an hour so i thought i would swap them over.

Here is the problem, it wouldn’t boot :S I am sure i changed every lead correctly so i was a bit worried that i had fried something (but as you can see the pc is working, but on the old psu ).

What happened is there was a split second of power and then nothing. I dont mean it started to boot, i mean the fans started to spin then stopped almost instantly.

Am i right to be thinking maybe the psu is faulty?

The other thing that confuses me is that this psu is plugged into the mobo and with that 24pin badboy and the cpu connector at the moment has a 4pin connector in (old psu). But my mobo has a 8pin slot. So when i swapped it over i copied the setup the same, and used another 4pin cpu connector instead of the 8pin one. Should i try the 8 pin? Whats the difference? Like i said, its working at the moment off the 4pin connector. But not on the new one? Whats the differences?

Sorry, i have tried to be as descriptive as i can, but im a bit annoyed as i am going to have to wait for the new hard drive till this is sorted!

Thanks for any help.
Venney

Venney, im actually unfamilliar with a 8 pin setup on anything, maybe its an intel thing but if the psu has it then i would try it. If that isnt it, i would also say it was a bad PSU.

Hello, well finally its all sorted, and what a joke.

I sent back the psu, which they kindly came and collected from my house. It was lucky because i was out but someone else was in to hand it over.

About 8 days went or so (including bank holidays and weekend i think) and i get an email confirming a faulty psu, so i was like thats good. Get another email, saying out of stock.

I wrote a very angry email explaining i couldn’t use my new hdd until i got the new psu, and it was about 3 weeks after my initial purchase of everything (new psu, new hdd and new sata cable). The next day i get an email saying it will be delivered friday, great because i was going to be away for a long weekend (4 days). Turns out they left it with next door, so i came home today, cracked it open and wacked it in.

And finally, i have my TB drive running

The psu is lovely, its silent and i can really see that all the noise in my pc if from my nasty gpu which will be gone when i fancy a new one (probably when alan wake comes out).

So ive already made 3 partitions on the new drive.

30gig - vista and alan wake ( i will try and get a copy of vista soon )
30gig - Ubuntu (just going to try Linux for the first time, see how it is)
and about 870gig for spare things

I am really happy with the new drive, it should last me a long time, and my pc is looking much tidier thanks to the molex connectors on the psu, i only have 3 cables + the mobo cable in use.

Oh and i looked up about the 8pin psu connector, apparently it just delivers a more stable power source than the 4pin, no difference really but if you have an 8pin it was advised that you use it.

Hope everyone is well, i will post again with my thoughts of Linux and vista. I am getting 64bit versions of both.

So i went ahead and installed Ubuntu. It took me a while as i kept doing things wrong, i had to loose the 3 partitions and just let Ubuntu make a second one. So as it stands i have 30 gig partition for Ubuntu and the rest is unformatted atm i think.

Well my opinion on Ubuntu... i like it

It seems a lot less jumbled and a lot clearer to be honest. It wont let me use the enhanced desktop feature but i will look into that more tomorrow (i think because i don't have an nvidia or something).

Anyone else ever used this? For a free OS i think its very good.

I like ubuntu but theres alot more stuff available for the 32 bit version. I started with the 64 but didnt find many packages for it. Drivers and software are all over for 32 bit.

Nvidia does have better linux support, especially with older cards but with either brand you must have something better than the basic drivers that linux itself installs or you will have very little if any 3d support.

I just looked on atis website, and seen that they do have drivers for linux, so thanks liljim for the advice, i will give it a bash

Ok jim i have a problem, i hope you can help.

So i already had Ubuntu installed and it was working fine, i manged to get xp to boot as default OS. I then installed Vista ultimate 64bit (which i cant get ANYTHING to work with properly, cannot even find a driver to work for my wireless adapter). Well, now i cannot load Ubuntu at all. I had a look, and as far as i could tell, vista installed over the Ubuntu install, so i made a new partition and installed it again. I now cannot load Ubuntu.

When i load the pc, it just comes up saying boot vista or previous windows. I have no way of booting into Ubuntu. The Ubuntu loader which worked when it was just xp n Linux isnt showing up anymore.

I would rather have Ubuntu than vista, and i may try a 32 bit vista now as the 64bit one is rubbish any recommendations?

Any advice would be great.

Oh and a little more info, my new hard drive is plugged into my mobo via sata port 7. When i go into my mobo bios, it only displays sata ports 1 - 6.

I tried to make it only boot the new hdd, but as it wont find it in the bios i could only get the vista loader up

Hope that makes sense.

Again, any help would be good. Thanks

Venney
p.s. i really feel that ive grown in the computer world after fiddling with all this stuff

Oh and another thing, i just want to know, if i change my mind about all this, if i just delete the partition with vista on, will xp just load as usua? Or am i going to have a problem with booting XP ?

i can answer your last question pretty quick, im at work so i have to get back to you on the rest but xp will probably not load just as you want it but its usually an easy fix. You will have to boot from the xp disk and load recovery console. At the command prompt you will type fixmbr and press enter. You will be asked if your sure, press Y and enter then type exit and press enter. That should get you booting on your xp install after deleting other partitions.

This is exactly why i recommend loading linux last, it has a far superior boot loader that should let all 3 OS's load instead of messing with vista's boot loader.

I'll get back to you on the other issues when i can.

Well ok new update.

I still cannot seem to boot into linux. but i have simply had enough and just want to get my pc and xp back to how it was, i am just worried that if i keep messing about i will break my pc

i tried using
'super grub disk'
to fix my linux, it diddnt work for some reason. I can now only boot into xp using the super grub disk.

I know you said jim that i can fix windows loader by going into the rocovery console with the xp cd.

I dont have any xp cd with me, am i able just to obtain any copy and put it in my machine, then boot into the recovery console that way?

Seems your new PSU is not supplying sufficient power to the new larger size HDD and the whole system.

what? new psu is working perfectly.

whilst replying to this, what would happend jim if i installed a differnt version of linux, would that automatically install a new bootloader? ive tried to fix the bootloaded of ubuntu but i cant get it to work, dont wanna keep messing around.