yes, I have a little problem. I have a ECS k7s5a with athlon XP 1700+, geforce 4 MX 440, 256 ddr ram, 40gb western digital hard drive with windows xp pro. While playing return to castle wolfenstein, it froze up and I tried start menu and control alt delete, but nothing happened so I reset it. When It rebooted, nothing at all showed up on the monitor, yet the fans on the processer and video card were spinning. After reseating the video card and rebooting, nothing came up on the monitor yet again. I even tried another monitor. I have a bad feeling that this motherboard was a piece of trash and could not handle my processer. What's wrong??
thanks

You have enough fans in the machine besides the fans on your video card and CPU? Didnt fry your new Video card did ya? You have a spare video card lying around that works? Stick that in and reboot. Could be your video card is toast on a stick. Doesnt sound to me like your motherboard and yes your mobo will work with the Athlon XP.
First thing is to try a another video card.
You may want to also look here. Although if you were playing Wolfenstien i doubt this is your problem.
http://www.ecs.com.tw/download/k7s5a.htm

V

yeah I dont think the vid card is fried, its has an efficient cooling system. DId I crack my cpu? that thought came to my mind as well... well thanks for your input..
dana

actually I take that back, why wouldn't my geforce 4 be the problem! If the fans are still spinning is it fried? AHHHHH, my new investment! well anyways thanks for the help.

Well there is one quick way of checking the parts...swap them into a known working machine.

Start with the video card, if it works in another machine then either you have another problem, like heat, fried CPU, or bad power supply...or the motherboard is gone.

No matter what, spinning fans only indicate that the fan is working, not that anything else is...

Were you overclocking that GeForce? If so even with the cooler on it it could fry quickly.

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mjc
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No I wasnt overclocking my video card and I am pretty sure the problem is the video card. I don't even have another system I can test it in! I'll get around it somehow and maybe try to return it .
thanks for the help

I have a bad feeling that this motherboard was a piece of trash and could not handle my processer

BULLHOCKY!! I run the exact same cpu on a K7S5A with 1 GB of PC2100 DDR and a Geforce3 Ti200 ( XP Pro on a 40 GB maxtor ) and it not only plays' Wolfenstien like a dream, it also handles every other game i run ( QIII, Elite force, Mech4, etc... ) with nary a problem!

My call would be the power supply, you should have at least a 300 Watt-400 would be better, especially with the G4 as it pulls even more juice than the G3 series does.


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iisbob

Computer-Show me the Enterprise; no bloody A, no bloody B, and no bloody C-just the original...Mr Scott { from a STNG episode }

Browse around this Link.... Good BBS for the K7S5A.

http://pub65.ezboard.com/bk7s5amotherboardforum

Luck.

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....How long is a minute... depends on which side of the Bathroom door you're on. ......
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yeah I started it up today and it magically worked. But 10 minutes into my period of glory it locked up again. I also inserted a functioning vid card and still nothing went on .

Since it seems to work for a few minutes before locking up, I think it sounds like either heat or power supply problems. I doubt that the CPU is bad or damaged, usually it would not nboot at all if that were the case. Since it did boot again and work briefly that indicates that the video card is functional, and memory as well.

That leaves power supply, insufficient power, (wattage) or heat...My first attempt would be to try it with the case open and a small fan blowing inside, that should rule out heat, then try a higher wattage power supply.

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Hi Friend,
if you look up a few posts, you will see my name under the topic "NO BOOT".
i think i did a good job of defining my system and explaining the symptoms.
my system is similar to yours but i am running WINDOWS 2000 PRO. just about the same thing happened to me as did you. not precisely, but close.
close enough for me to respond to you.
i'm using a MSI (microstar) motherboard and i too, have 256MB DDR PC2100 ram. i'm using a 1.2GHZ AMD ATHLON TBIRD w/266FSB.
here's the deal, i have 6 fans in my system and a 450 watt ENERMAX power supply in a mid-tower case.
my motherboard has self diagnostics and 4 led's to give you a color code (green or red) for the diagnostics.
when i attempted to boot, nothing at all happened, i mean nothing my man. nothing in the box and nothing on the monitor. however, all 6 fans were running.
the first thing i did was to remove the motherboard and install the new motherboard - this didn't solve anything except to eliminate the motherboard as the problem source.
keep in mind sir, when i hit the power button, the fans come on and 4 led's on the motherboard are all red. this indicates a cpu problem (according to the MSI manual. that's it. i cannot get into the bios to change anything otherwise, i have video and audio integrated on my motherboard and i could remove the video card and set the bios to make the on board video active.
i have been told by MSI techs and another well learned and experienced computer tech that i should be able to boot without any memory at all or without a video card. NOW, WHEN I SAY I SHOULD BE ABLE TO BOOT......THIS DOES NOT MEAN MY SYSTEM WILL BOOT ALL THE WAY UP AND BECOME OPERABLE BUT IT WILL GIVE ME AND INDICATION OF WHAT IS WRONG.
so, i would say to you, or anyone who reads this, with your system, if you took the memory card out (it ain't a chip no more with DDR) and you knew everything else was working properly, you hit the power button, what would happen?
i ask the same if you left the memory in and removed the video card - hit the power button - what would happen?
you could have a myriad of things that could go wrong. on the motherboard itself, there are quite a few components other than cpu that could overheat and give the wrong voltages to the system.
one thing though, if you wait for an hour or so (everything should cool down enough to be within its' temperature parameters) and you can reboot and run for 10 minutes before it shuts down then you have a temp problem.
this puts the power supply on the outer perimeter but does not eliminate it completely. focus on the motherboard, cpu and video. if after an hour it did nothing at all, then focus on the motherboard and cpu.

Have you tried reseting the bios. my P4 system has the same symptoms when I have been playing around in bios setup and left something set a little high (FSB, MEM timmings,or AGP bus speed)

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i had the same problem when i first set my comp up. its realitvly the same setup you are running. one question though. you tried to reset your video card and all. but still nothing. but once or twice i have read you say it worked for a brief time. im thinkin maybe a bad agp slot. i dunno i could be wrong on this. just thought i would try and throw my 2 cents in. i know its not what you want to hear. but thats what im thinking

[This message has been edited by mamba (edited 04-17-2002).]

yeah I reseated and used another video card and I also tried another power supply at 450 watts as opposed to my original 350. I'm pretty sure I have a heating problem... good suggestions, keep em coming... thanks

oh yeah, would a regular small house fan work for some makeshift cooling or am I just blowing the hot air back over the vid card and cpu? thanks

allright, I thought I would give the computer one last chance, so I put on a fan blowing into the case on high power, and it started up! yes but as soon as it was going to start windows nothing was showing up on the monitor. BLAST! I think I am just going to take it somewhere because I am out of ideas and will power. thanks ,
dana

Hi, I'm using a diagnostic flowchart so here goes.

1. It appears the system is not dead [there is power of sorts being suplied]because the fans are working.
2. Did POST appear to run. [I assume no].
3. Were there any audible beeps? [I assume no].
Conclusion = You have no POST

POST Diagnosis:
A. Are Power Supply Unit voltages correct? [let's assume they are].
B. Disconnect all peripherals and system adapter cards in the base unit except keyboard and monitor.
C. Does the post now run?
If it doesn't the system board is faulty.
D. If it does, re-connect the floppy disk drive and run a diagnostics prog from a floppy disk to check your system board.
E. If the sysem board passes or if you dont do it and assume it's ok then:
F. Switch off and re-connect one peripheral or adapter card and re-boot.
G. Repeat step "F" untill POST fails to run. The last item connected is probably faulty and should be tested using diagnostics on a floppy to confirm this.
H. If all items are connected and POST fails to run either power supply voltages are faulty or your display is faulty.

Contact me by Email if this [H] occurs and I'll take you through the other steps on this forum and/or by Email.

yeah everything works now thanks for all the help