New Build Woes

[jawilkins]

I am a novice and I am trying to build a new PC. I am having a problem getting the PC to boot. Juice is getting to the fans, I have reset the jumpers on the hard drive to use the drive as a master, I have a single IDE cable going from the hard drive to the primary IDE slot. When I turn on the power the lights come on and the fans come on, but for some reason nothing comes up on the screen. I have tried a couple of different working monitors and I have tried plugging the monitor both into the port directly in the video card and in the video port provided on the motherboard. Also, I am not getting any beeps once the fans start running Any suggestions?

[Mick_D]

You are not making it past the post so there is no way you'll boot. First unplug your power, disconnect any drives you have hooked up (both power and cables to the mobo). Try to post using mobo with only the CPU, cpu fan, ATX power (the twenty pin and the four pin), front power switch, 1 stick of ram, and vid card. See if you can hear the beep and go directely into bios. If not take the board out and lay it on a piece of cardboard or phonebook and try again.

Also please list your system componants and specs here. Motherboard, CPU, ram etc. etc.

[jawilkins]

Intel D865GBF motherboard
P4 Processor 3 GHz 478 Socket
512MB Corsair DDR RAM
Seagate Barracuda 7200 ATA IDE HD (120GB)
Creative Labs SB Audigy 2ZS sound card
Asus V9520 Magic/T GeForce FX5200 Video Card
Sony CD-RW drive
Intel PWLA8290MT Pro1000 NIC

[jawilkins]

Thanks! I'll try this and get back to you.

[jawilkins]

Tried 'em both and still no beep. The fans come on, but that's it...

[Mick_D]

Please also look on your mobo box for the rev #'s and post them also. They will begin with AA folllowed by c25827-405 or something like that. Also the CPU FSB MHz and the L2 cache size. I see you onboard graphics on this board so if you can't get into bios, unplug the fx5200 vid card and remove from mobo and attach the monitor to the video output on the mobo. Try again.

Also check your power connections to the mobo and be sure the are seated properly. To be safe unplug and then plug them back in. Do the same with the one stick of ram. If I remember correctly intel boards usually have a green power light on the board when power is connected to it. Is this lit?

[jawilkins]

mobo Rev# = AAC28142-409
CPU = 800Mhz FSB & 1GB L2 cache

OK, I'm jerking the Vid card and trying again...

[Mick_D]

Okay your intel motherboard does support the processor. Intel sometimes creates revisions of boards that will not support certain processors and the CPU you have did have some exceptions but you are okay as far as that goes.
If you still haven't had any luck pull the cpu fan and the cpu. Check the cpu for any bent pins, If everything looks okay re-seat the cpu install the heatsink and fan. If you used thermal paste wipe the old off and reapply. If you used the pad that came with the heatsink you should be okay. Try the barebones boot again.

[jawilkins]

Still nada. I currently have the CPU (and fan) in, RAM in, monitor plugged direclty into the mobo, no drives plugged in. When I turn on the power the fans come on, but nothing else happens. Here's another curious thing - at first when I couldn't get anything on the monitor when I turned the PC off I got a small beep when it switched off, now I'm not even getting that. Are things getting worse? :-(

[jawilkins]

OK, I'll try reseating the CPU...

[Mick_D]

No things aren't getting worse. We haven't gotten anywhere yet. :)

[jawilkins]

Well, I've reseated the CPU and still nothing. A tiny piece of the pad stuck to the back of the CPU, I just left that on there and tried to align it with the bare spot on the heatsink. I didn't want to touch the back of the CPU.

Should I try changing the jumper on the BIOS??

[jawilkins]

Well, I tried reconfiguring the BIOS and that didn't work either. I wonder if it's time to take it to the computer shop and have them bail me out. Could it be that either the CPU or the mobo are bad? I mean Intel's name brand, but I guess they could put out bad stuff too, eh? Are there any hardware diagnosis tools that can identify a bad CPU or motherboard?

[jawilkins]

Givin' it up for the night. Thanks for your help McD

[Mick_D]

Sorry, I had to step away for a bit.

If we aren't getting a post (any beeps at all) it's either the PSU, CPU or the MOBO. The most likely being the Intel board but that's not set in stone. If you don't have spare parts like a board, PSU, CPU. to swap out then you can either take it to a shop and let them test them out or RMA the Intel board and wait until you get a replacement. If you have a multi-tester and the know how to use it you could test the voltage output on the PSU. What kind of PSU do you have by the way?

New boards right out of the box (Intel too) sometimes are defective. The same can be true for the PSU and the CPU, although very seldom the CPU.

[jawilkins]

Mick,

Thanks for all your help - I wimped out and took it to a computer shop this morning. Here's what the problem was:

1. The power supply was set on 240v not 120v.

2. My RAM was 266 and for a mobo with an 800 FSB I needed RAM @ 400.

Thanks for taking the time to work with me on this...

jw

[Mick_D]

Glad you got everything fixed.