I rescued an old PC from work that was otherwise going to be scrapped. It had a Gigabyte GA-7ZX motherboard, an 800 MHz Athlon processor, a 30 GB Maxtor HD and a generic 52X CD-ROM drive. My plan was to cannibalize working components to build a system for my seven-year-old. I put a stick of memory in it and an ASUS MX-440 video card. It booted fine and everything appeared to be working. The case was beat up and missing a side panel, so I migrated the parts to another, nearly identical case. (I then foolishly tossed the old case because it was garbage day.) The computer would not boot in the new case. The power LED on the board would flicker and the CPU and case fans would spin for an instant, then nothing.

I checked connections, unplugged components, cleared the CMOS, etc.—nothing. I swapped out the power supply with a new one I had and got the same result. Nothing. I then swapped the motherboard with a new Gigabyte 7NF-RZ-C and an old (but working when recently pulled) 1.2 GHz Duron. I put a new 256 MB stick of PC2100 memory in it. The light in the network connection would flicker briefly, then nothing. I hooked up the old power supply to an old Matsonic MS7308E board outside the case and it powered up. I hooked up the new power supply to the Matsonic board and it powered up. When I took the 7NF-RZ-C board out of the case and hooked it up to either power supply it powered up. I put it back in the case, hooked everything back up (one component at a time, powering up after each component) and the computer booted fine.

I noticed the 30 GB hard drive was set up with a single 2 GB partition under DOS 6.0.2. Windows 98 was loaded but there was 28 GB unused. I didn't want to tackle the drive capacity problem after the traumatic start-up, so I shut the computer down. The next day it wouldn't boot. The only thing different this time was the CPU and case fans came on and the hard drive spun up. No POST, no signal to the monitor. My plan is to take the system apart and put it back together one piece at a time (again).

My question is this: Does it sound like I have a bad component somewhere? Could it be one of the drives as they are the only common components throughout this ordeal? Or could there be a grounding issue or some other problem with the case itself? I'm not sure what that would be but the problems started when I migrated the old hardware to the new(er) case (the case had housed an ASUS A7N-266VM-based system and was only taken out of service when I migrated its guts to a smaller case).

Hello cmhayes,

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'Tis a bit confusing...:)

Have you actually been able to boot into Windoze, or are you referring to "boot" as simply making it through POST??

You might want to check the stand-offs in the case...they should match exactly to the mounting screws. It almost sounds as though there might be one grounding the motherboards when you place them in...

Maybe the obvious, but is the new case working ok?
Im thinking maybe the power switch may be faulty. Could be too obvious, but worth suggesting!

The old Gigabyte board booted all the way to Windows (Win 98). When I put all the components in the new case, it wouldn't power on at all. After monkeying around with the components outside the case, things started to work. With the new Gigabyte board and all the components back in the new case, it also booted to Windows. After shut down, it wouldn't power up correctly. Fans come on but no POST and no video signal.

I did check the stand-offs on the mother board tray. No extras and none missing. No screws or other junk between the board and tray, either. I'm considering putting fiber washers on the stand-offs when I dismantle and reassemble the computer.

Thanks for the post.

At first I thought the new case (which isn't really new—as previously mentioned, it housed our main computer for two years) may be the problem. I checked the switch with an ohm meter and it appeared to be working correctly. Even so, I tried starting the computer with the reset switch connected to the power switch pins on the motherboard. I also tried just shorting the pins. Nada. Now I get the CPU and case fans to come on, so I'm pretty sure the power switch is okay. I'm wondering if the CPU fan may be the culprit, although it does spin up.

Thanks for the post.

On many boards, if the RPM sensing line on the CPU fan doesn't report to the motherboard, they will not power up thereby protecting the processor from an early demise...

I thought of that. The fan was working when pulled but I thought maybe a wire came loose in the connector...

I got the computer to boot to Windows. I unplugged all the components, cleared the CMOS, and hooked everything back up. It booted to Windows. When I shut it down it wouldn't boot again (fans but no POST). I just cleared the CMOS and rebooted. It came up to Windows again. Shut down. Start up. No boot. Cleared CMOS and it booted to Windows. I'm running the FAT 32 conversion on the hard drive before I shut it down again. Is this a bad CMOS battery? The board is new. I've only replaced one CMOS battery in twenty years of PC ownership (around ten computers) and that was on a five-year-old Mac LCII. How common is it for a CMOS battery to go bad? Is there some other reason the settings to get dumped?

A bad CMOS chip would probably dump settings...

I'm wondering if Windoze is having a problem with booting to this new system properly...if this is the configuration from the previous motherboard etc...

If I'm understanding what you are attempting to do, your Windoze installation on the harddrive is from the previous motherboard??

My suggestion would be to download a memory tester from a barebone boot scenario:

http://www.memtest86.com/

These are self booting and would let the system run for a bit...

Or, you could try a Win98 boot disk and see if you routinely get to the A:

If that works out, I'd try a clean harddrive and run the harddrive diagnostics...or, you could use the harddrive diagnostics to check the integrity of the harddrive.

Whyzman:

You're correct. The hard drive was originally associated with the old motherboard. I've swapped out a few motherboards in the past and was too lazy to wipe the hard drive and start fresh. I just loaded the new mobo drivers over the old. This always seemed to work. (I put the Matsonic mobo mentioned in my original post in an old computer at church and it worked fine.) Since I was swapping Gigabyte boards, I figured I was safe with this approach. Maybe not a good assumption this time. Thanks for the good ideas.