Hey everyone, this is my first time here and first time building a pc so please bare with me. Here is a little background on my pc. I am running a Intel core 2 quad Q6600 cpu, on an evga 780i mobo with dual evga 8800gts G92, a silencer 750 quad ps, a soundblaster fatality pro sound card, 2gb crucial ballistix ram, a Western Ditigal 150 GB raptor in a coolermaster cosmos case with a system builders edition of windows vista ultimate. My computer ran fine with all of this.

When I got my pc I ordered 2 HDs, a 500GB and my raptor. The 500 gb turned out to be IDE so I rma'ed it. Also got 2 out of 4 dead sticks of ram.

Yesterday I got my rma'ed HD and Ram. I installed the ram restarted the computer and everything worked fine. When I pluged in the new HD my computer did not boot right.

I unplugged it but my comp still won't boot right. It takes me to the screen where it says choose to boot it up in safe mode, safe w/ networking , safe with cmd prmt, Last good known config or start normally. If I do either of the last two it shows me the win progress bar and then that goes away and the screen stays blank. And if I do the others, they get to a certain point and just stop. I don't know what to do anymore. I have the new 780i mobo, but when I look on the led thing for an error it just says FF which means its fine.

Last night I was somehow able to install vista on my new HD, but when I try to boot it up now, it gives me the same problem expect I can not choose what mode to boot it in.

If I boot my comp from my old HD that worked fine 2 days ago this is what happens.

I start my computer, it posts.
Then the system checks come on.
Then it gives me a choice of to start it in safe mode, sm w/ networking, sm w/ cmdprmt, last known good config or normally.
(If i start it in any safe mode it gets to a certain point and stops for a while. I waited over 15 min with nothing. If I start it up in the last known good config or normally it goes to the windows progress bar, finishes with that then the screen stays blank.

If I boot my comp from the new HD that I installed vista on this is what happens.

Start comp, posts.
System checks come on.
Goes straight to progress bar, when thats done
screen stays blank.

* I tried swaping out the ram, unpluging the HDs, and such, but nothing has worked.

I don't know if it is hardware or if it has something to do with the bios. Can someone please help me or give me some advice. Thanks alot.

~Jon.

Howdy Jmess and welcome to PCHF,

What type of hard drive are you installing windows on? SATA or the IDE?

The Raptor should do fine as it does not need a SATA driver since it is SATA 150,, but raptors do not like being by themselves they like being in raid...

When I built a system awhile ago with my raptors. It took almsot 12 minutes to boot into windows the first couple of times, and that is because raptors do not use the fast write cacheing..This is what makes them weak by themselves..

Let it sit for a good 10 15 minutes and see if it boots up...

Thanks for the welcome.
They are both sata, but they are differen't HDs, one is a 150 gb raptor and the other is a 500gb caviar so I do not think I can run them in raid. Also I tried letting the hd sit for over 30 min with nothing. So im not sure what to do next.

You could put them in raid but you would losse 400 gigs of space lol..

Which one has windows on it? The 10k drive or the 7200 drive?

I wouldtry all over again, and reformat the hard drives (put it on the raptor) and partition the drives.. Seems like that would be the easiest way out.. Do a full install not a repair...(on the raptor should only take about 10 minutes)

As I have 4 of em lol in raid..

Also try this first.. Go into yer BIOS and make sure all your SATA ports are turned on...After that go to safe defaults and press F10

Well I have windows on both now. I have my info on the Raptor, and thats the one I would rather boot up, but niether are booting up. Ill try and make sure the sata ports are on. Wierd thing is, I didn't change anything when I put in the new HD. Just pluged it in and this happened, and when I unplugged it, it stayed like this.

ahhh did you boot up after you unplugged it?

And did you plug it back in the same SATA port? This could be yer problem... Ya make sure all SATA ports are funtional..