Hi guys, hope you can help.

I recently purchased all the bits for a Duron 1.3ghz pc.

I have installed the cpu and heatsink onto the motherboard and installed the RAM and video card in the the system case and connected the psu to the motherboard.

On first boot the pc powers up (heatsink fan, motherboard fan and power supply fan all working) but the pc does not bbot. The power light on the motherboard is on.

At first i thought it must be the motherboard as there were no beeps at all. But i then tried booting it with just the m/b, cpu and video card. And the motherboard beeped - indicating no memory detected. This i thought meant that it was the memory.

I then replaced the memory, but it too did not boot and without any beeps. Now i assume that another new pc2100 128mb ram is not faulty and i know that this is compatible. So i am left to think that it is either the cpu or motherboard. (but if it beeped surely it means its ok?)

What i really want to find out is the process in which the computer boots. If the cpu was faulty - would it not beep and stop the boot up?

I have an asus a7m266 motherboard, kingston pc2100 266mhz 128mb RAM, 300 w power supply, AMD Duron 1.3ghz CPU with heatsink and fan.

any thoughts???

You'll find a good description of the boot process Here (http://www.pcguide.com/topic.html)

Take the motherboard out of the case and power it up on a tabletop to check for a ground problem. In some cases the wires won't reach and you'll have to pull the power supply too.

If you get it to boot out of the case, get some cardboard washers and put them between the motherboard and the metal standoffs. You'll need motherboard, CPU, video card and RAM. A keyboard comes in handy but is not mandatory.

Also try a different video card.

Yes, it is possible two different RAM chips are bad, ESD (static electricity) can do that easily. When you touch a door knob and it shocks you that's 2000 volts minimum. 2500 volts minimum for you to hear it.

100 volts can fry computer components. You can create more than that turning in your chair to pick up a part. Memory is probably the most susceptible component in the computer, with modem running a close second.

Another thing to watch for...When using an ATX case, the motherboard is still getting power when plugged in. Any time you install or remove components you should unplug it or turn off the main polwer switch, if you have one. I've fried 2 AGP video cards by forgetting to unplug...both are hung on my shop wall as reminders...

cheers for the reply.

I will try booting it outside the case. I have replaced the original video card with a new one and still nothing.

also with the memory installation - both times i was wearing an anti-static strap and followed the usual rules. I have installed lots of ram and so am doubtful they are both gone - but i could be wrong.

I had a similar problem recently. Check this thread for ideas:

http://www.pcguide.com/vb/showthread.php?s=&threadid=18216

Budfred

cheers for the help budfred,

what happened to yours after?

some good ideas in there that i will try - i too tend to think the cpu is dead - but im gonna play with it tonight.

cheers again

I just paid for a really cheap motherboard this weekend and am waiting for it to arrive so I can test the CPU. I think I am out a couple of hundred dollars on the deal, but I am still hoping it is the motherboard rather than the CPU since this would be cheaper. If the CPU is dead and the sellers won't replace it, I will probably switch to an AMD chip with a different motherboard and sell the 2 motherboards I have on eBay.

Budfred

well....

i took the cpu in question and put it on another system i recently built and it was fine.

Looks like it is the motherboard.

Although one thing puzzled me. I put the cpu that i took out from another system (amd duron 1 ghz) into the problem system and with the mb, cpu, video card and memory in i tried to boot up. But instead of the usual silence - this time the motherboard beeped. I looked in the manual and it represented no ddr memory present or detected - this threw up more questions - why didnt it beep with the other processor that i thought didnt work? . If it had stayed silent then i would have automatically thought the mb was faulty. But by beeping i now am more confused.

any ideas on why this happend?

my new motherboard is coming today so will let you know how it goes. Interesting fact was that asus have stopped producing the original motherboard that i had - hopefully cos it was faulty.

Hopefully budfred - seeing as you had similar problems to mine - it can shed some more light on the situation.

So basically what you have going is that the CPU worked in another system and the motherboard worked (partially) with another CPU. That basically rules both out as the problem. It is possible that you have a short that was messing things up and that removing the CPU somehow undid the short. It is also possible that the RAM is the problem, but that would be less likely since it should have given you the same beeps that it did with the alternate CPU if that was the case.

Did you do the thing of taking the MB out and testing it on a nonconductive surface? If it is a short, it can be elusive, but this is one way to almost rule that out.

Are you certain that your CPU is compatible with the MB that it was on? That could explain why both seem to be good, but they don't play well together.

Now I'm really confused....
Budfred:confused: :confused:

success!!!

Got my new ecs k76a motherboard and put in BOTH memory dimms and cpu, and video card and it worked a treat. Am using it now actually. Either the motherboard was faulty or something was incompatible - but i tend to think the motherboard memory banks were fudged.

Just another quick question - how do i check that my mb is running at 266mhz and also what speed the memory is going at? eg is that at 200/266mhz??

cheers for all your help on the problems i had before.

Usually you would check the speed and set speeds in BIOS. It should tell you how to get into BIOS Setup when you first start booting and one of the available screens will allow you to check current settings and change them. You RAM will probably be 133 unless it is DDR. Hopefully you got a manual with this MB and it should give you a lot of info about the BIOS and changing settings.

Congratulations on getting it all running.

Budfred

yeah its ddr ram, pc2100 (266mhz) would like to check that everything running ok as my bios doesnt show me in the settings.

Am running wcpuid program and in the info i can find it says the system bus is 200mhz, and system clock 100mhz, with the internal clock 1300mhz (the processor)

Now i thought the system bus should be 266mhz?

any other ways of checking?

Now I am really confused. I went looking for info on your MB and couldn't find it on the EliteGroup (ECS) website. You wouldn't by any chance mean the K7S5A MB would you? I have that board and the manual, so I can look things up if that is it. Also, it sounds like you are saying you couldn't find the settings for system speed and other things in the BIOS, but that is where they should be. If you can't find them there, something is probably wrong.

It sounds for sure that your RAM should be running at 266, but I think the rest would depend on the capability of your CPU. Is this still the 1.3Ghz Duron?

Budfred

my mb is a ECS K7S6A, the bios settings dont actually show the system speeds only allows you to let the cpu pick the speed or manually assign a speed. It doesnt however show the speed as in other bios'.

Yep still the 1.3ghz Duron.

Is there any downloadable program that would give me the info??

Here are some references:
This is the link to download the manual for your board which should be able to tell you how to deal with the BIOS settings.

http://ecsusa.com/downloads/manual_k7s.html

This is a link to AMD Faqs for your CPU:

http://www.amd.com/us-en/Processors/ProductInformation/0,,30_118_1274_1202^1018,00.html#9947

This is the link for AMD for a number of resources re: your Duron.

http://www.amd.com/us-en/Processors/ProductInformation/0,,30_118_1274_1202^1018,00.html

It looks like your Duron runs at 200Mhz front side bus, so it may be able to be set higher than you have it, but not as high as you would like.

And this link will get you Belarc Advisor which can tell you all sorts of things about your machine:

http://www.belarc.com/free_download.html

Budfred