Broken again(story of my life)

[jltor]

Hi, I am trying to fix my old system with some upgrades and such. I got a ASUS a7n8x deluxe board and slapped on my old athlon xp 1700+. I got 2x256 geil 3500 ram. My v-cards is an ATI 8500 le the 128MB version. After hooking everything up I powered on the system and could not get any video out at all. So I hooked up everything back into my old system and could not get any video out of that. What the heck? Is it possible that i fried my v-cardsomewhere along the line? maybe the processor is done for? I am at a loss. Thanks for any advice, Josh

[saphalline]

Well, first off, welcome to http://www.pcguide.com/ubb/pcgubb.gif

Secondly, this thread really belongs in the troubleshooting section. Don't worry, tho, I'm sure one of the moderators will be around to move it. :D

Go easy on jltor, mjc! I've already berated enough! :p

[Budfred]

While we wait for the big move, I will offer a couple of suggestions. The main one is to make sure that the video card is seated properly, AGP cards can be tricky to seat and will not work if not proper. Secondly, go through and check/doublecheck all connections. It is easy to accidently knock something loose and then wonder why it isn't working. Particularly check the CPU fan connection to the motherboard.

It is possible that you fried something, but I would do a lot of troubleshooting before coming to that conclusion. Let us know what troubleshooting you have done and what the results were. Particularly let us know how much life you get when you boot, do you get a POST beep, drives spin up and so on???

[jltor]

Ok heres what troubleshooting I have done. I rechecked all connection, cleared the cmos and reseated everything from ram to mobo to heatsink. No beep, no display. I did the same setup for my old mobo which was working fine(well it had stability issues) and i got the same result, no display or beep. Then I laid both setups on a piece of cardboard out of the case to check for case grounding issues. I got the same result in both situations which was identical to that for in case testing. From this I have ruled out the motherboard and case. What would happen if my cpu was bad?

[Budfred]

If you are testing out of the case and not even getting a POST beep, that would make the CPU or motherboard the main suspects. It is unlikely that both died at the same time though unless you were real careless about static electricity (ESD). Did you strip them down to a minimal boot? No drives and only one stick of RAM. If you still don't get anything like that, I would try without the video card. If the CPU and mobo are ok, you should at least get a beep (probably a whole bunch to tell you that you don't have video). If still no joy, you will need to test the mobo and CPU...

[jltor]

I tried with no graphics card and I got no beeps. I am looking at my processor now and I think that it is a bit cracked on the sides, so that Is likely the problem. I think I broke it when installing my new heatsink, which was a real pain. Of course all my booting attempts were with 1 ram and no drives to eliminate those possibilites. On last thing, does the mobo have its own beeper for errors or do I need to hook that up to the tower? I know on the new mobo i see what looks like a small speaker. I just havent heard any beeps though since I got this piece. Thanks.

[Budfred]

I haven't heard of a mobo with a speaker on it, so I believe you have to have the one in the case hooked up. It takes a little creative sculpturing of the case and mobo, but it can be done. If you didn't have the speaker attached when you tested, I would try it with the speaker since it may actually be working. However, a cracked CPU is not promising...