Sorry if this is only loosely a hardware issue, I'm actually not sure what the problem is so I can't say for sure which forum to go to (I'll repost somewhere else if needed). I'm at wit's end and have no idea how to solve this problem.
Just recently decided to build my first PC, with components chosen primarily for gaming in mind, however I'm having a bit of an odd issue and I'm not sure what to do. Sorry if I sound like I have little idea of what I'm doing, it's mostly because I don't
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Specs:
Motherboard: Gigabyte GA-X58A-UD3R
CPU: Intel Core i7 950
GPU: Radeon HD5850
Memory: Corsair TR3X6G1333C9 XMS3 6 GB 1333MHz
Optical Drive: Lite-On 24X SATA DVD+/-RW Dual Layer Drive IHAS424-98
Hard Drive: Western Digital Caviar Black 1 WD1001FALS
PSU: Corsair CMPSU-650TX 650-Watt TX Series 80
OS: None, right now (but hopefully Windows 7 64 Bit OEM)
First boot went great, all the fans and proper LEDs went on, and I got straight to the "boot from disk" error message, so everything was properly connected and compatible. After resetting the computer I inserted the Windows 7 disk, and everything loaded fine until it got to the blue-green desktop screen where the Language Options menu would appear, except instead it would just sit on the empty background. It appeared to just freeze. I retried a couple of times, but it still hitched at the same spot everytime, I tried leaving it at that screen for ten minutes and it would still remain blank.
I worried that something was perhaps wrong with my Windows 7 disk or the optical drive, so I (dumbly) thought it would be a good idea to try a different disk (I later realized that all I had to do was wait about 15 minutes or so for it to get going). I tried putting in the disk that came with the Gigabyte motherboard, and it loaded up something called Xpress Recovery 2. There were only two options, "Backup" and "Reboot", and it was a little unclear as to which one I was currently selecting. I tried to just hit "reboot", but may have gotten "backup" by accident.
Now my problem is that whenever I try to boot my computer with the HDD as the first priority boot option, it gets stuck at the same "Verifying DMI data pool" message. If I insert the windows disk and put the CD-ROM as the first boot device and the HDD as the second, then it will still load up to the point of asking me where to install Windows 7, but the harddrive doesn't show up as an option. Despite being recognized accurately in the BIOS settings, Windows doesn't consider it connected.
I've made quite sure that my harddrive is plugged in correctly, it seemed to work along with all of the other components up until I inserted the gigabyte disk. I've tried clearing the CMOS, using recommended BIOS settings as well as the default ones.
I feel completely stuck on this and any help at all would be immensely appreciated. Admittedly, my judgement on the situation is a little clouded by the frustration of having everything just fall apart right before the finish line. I'm willing to replace some components if need be, but I'm turning to the internet as a last resort and hopefully preventative measure to that.
As I said, I'm very new to this so if I'm missing some important information and need to clarify anything please tell me. Thank you for at the very least reading this huge thing!
