PC not booting up, not even loading BIOS

[Ness]

Basically, on Friday, i was messing around with my PC, trying to install a ram stick i had found in an old unused computer in the house. I was too excited and getting impatient, and didn't check to see if the RAM had been inserted properly. I turned on my PC, nothing appeared on the screen, and mere seconds later, i smell burning, so naturally, i turned my PC off.
Now my PC fails to work at all, not even loading BIOS, and nothing appears on the screen. When i power up my PC, a beep happens to show that i've switched it on, but nothing happens after that. My CD-ROM drive's light flashes as it does when you switch on a PC; however, it does it in a way which appears as if my PC is constantly restarting or trying to load BIOS, over a period of 2 seconds.

I have tried taking out the RAM i put in and switching my PC on, and I have tried taking out all the RAM modules in my motherboard and doing the same; nothing changes. Is my motherboard broken, or is there something else wrong with it? I'm up for any suggestions; my new motherboard arrives tomorow. If my current motherboard is fine, that'd be great, as they have discontinued my "broken" motherboard (ASRock 939Dual-SATAII).

[Whyzman]

Welcome tohttp://www.pcguide.com/ubb/pcgubb.gif Forums!

A burning smell and motherboard in the same sentence is usually not a good thing... :(

RAM can differ from motherboard to motherboard. Are you sure the stick you attempted to install from the older computer was even suitable?

Some RAM sticks may look fairly similar but not be compatible.

What I would suggest doing is stripping the computer back to what we call barebones. Disconnect everything except a stick of RAM, video card monitor, keyboard, and CPU with fan. See if you can make it through POST (Power On Self Test).

[Ness]

Tried that too, minus the keyboard. Nada.
The stick i tried to use was in my old system before i killed my old Athlon XP by drowning it with an overdose of Artic SIlver :( It was giving me memory problems back then too, so i had removed it for the sake of system compatibility. I forgot it was that RAM module when i tried to insert it.

[Matt]

Do you see anything on the motherboard that looks damaged? Any scorch marks, etc.?

[Ness]

Doesn't matter now, already installed my new motherboard :p
Now i have a new problem; Windows XP install keeps crashing halfway through the setup after i format my C drive. Tried installing it on both my Hard Drives, same problem happens.

[Whyzman]

Sounds like perhaps a bad XP disk...scratches??

[thirddays]

I've had this problem i tried everythign exchange of hard drives and turns out it was Such as imple fix as a Cd, If it has minor scratches try making a burned copy, some times reburning a cd can work with the new burned copy, it's what i had done with mine and worked like a charm,

[Sylvander]

Usual solution is to copy the installation file set to a partition [other than C:] on the HDD and run the installation file from there.
I've never done this with XP, just Win98 and 2000Pro.

I normally use a FREE bootable "Emergency Boot CD" [EBCD] to do all the work.
e.g.
1. fdisk at a DOS 7.10 command prompt [on the 2nd menu], or FREE fdisk [2nd menu] to partition the HDD.
You could initially make the partitions FAT32, then later change them to NTFS.

2. format.com at a DOS 7.10 command prompt [on the 2nd menu] to format those partitions.

3. File Manager [FM][1st menu] to browse the drives/partitions and copy the files from the optical disk to the HDD [it can only write to FAT32 partitions; reads FAT & NTFS].
This has a nice GUI and displays 2 drives [optical and HDD partition] side-by-side in the left & right panes, and you copy from one to the other.
Not too sure whether FM will run the setup file [I think I had some trouble with that] or whether you must use DOS commands to navigate to the DOS version [WINNT.EXE not WINNT32.EXE] and use DOS to run that.

4. Good idea to...
a. Keep the installation file set off C: because it helps keep C: "lean & mean".
b. Leave them permanently in that "home" location because when Windows needs a file from the installation set it will fetch it in a blink.

[Ness]

Seems i had a RAM module that was preventing it from installing. I managed to install Windows. However I'm now faced with a new problem =/

I tried to install Motherboard Monitor 5 about 4 hours ago, and the installation crashed at the end of its progress bar, so i reset my PC. Now nothing shows up on the monitor, and there are no beeps, and there are no sounds coming from my hard drives or cd drive to indicate they are attempting to read data. I have tried swapping memory modules, and swapping my graphics card for another one. What the hell has gone wrong now? T_T

P.S. the motherboard I am using is an ECS KV2 Lite

[Sylvander]

Is the POST running [but not completing], or else does the PC appear "dead" [no signs of life whatever, no fans running]?

[Matt]

I'm assuming that you've already checked/reseated everything to make sure nothing was loose.

Maybe a near last-ditch check would be to reset the cmos maybe... though I doubt that's it...

If the power button is connected to the header pins right, your PSU should at least power up, maybe toggle the power switch on the PSU?

If the BIOS is at least checking, but faulting before it can display any POST information (usually video card or ram issues), you should at least hear some beeps. So it sounds like you're not even getting to that point.

The reason I was asking about any visible damage earlier is that when whatever it was that literally burnt out failed, it was possible that you may have damaged other components attached to your old motherboard.

I've seen it go both ways: a component burns out but the rest of the system is OK or a component burns out and takes a few core components with it.