hi, i bought an asus a7n8x-e deluxe mobo. the cpu is and 3200+ and ram = pc 3200. i am having prob with the motheboard. 1. it takes a long time to detect the ide devices (have a 40GB HD and a cd rw) 2. then after it detects the devices, it says post test completed successfully and booting from cd.. and then hangs ( doesnt proceed any further) any suggestions? thanks in advance

Try disconnecting each IDE device to see if you can determine if one of them is causing the problem.

Need more info... Are you using a HDD with XP pre-installed? or are you trying to boot from the CD to install Windows? Did you go into the BIOS & configure the settings to match your hardware? Are the HDD & CDRW on separate cables? If those are the only IDE devices you have, make the HDD primary master & the CDRW secondary master...

hi guys, thanks for the quick response. i am instaklling winxp from a cd and both the devices are on seperate ides. hdd is pri master and the cd is sec master and the bios is configured to boot from cd and then hdd. and the bios is reading the info correctly. also, i forgot to mention - the ram is being detected as single channel (what does that mean??)

Single channel isn't a problem. Dual channel mode is technology that's built into the motherboard...you'd need a matched pair of RAM sticks, installed in the proper slots to make use of it. If you only have one stick, or if you have two sticks that aren't installed in the proper slots, it will be detetced as single channel. Up until dual channel came into being, all RAM ran in single channle mode, we just didn't refer to it as such...

It could be your CD drive. I discovered on my MSI board that if I try to book from a brand new NEC DVD/CD drive, it hangs right after the first screen come up. If I book from an older TDK CD/RW, no problem. The NEC works fine otherwise--just can't boot from it.

thanks Zorki1c - tried with ordinary cd rom. didnt help. same problem