New built system: no output to monitor

[The Mad Jock]

HELP!! I've just put together a new PC made up of: ASrock K7S8X mobo, Sapphire ATI Radeon 9200 SE AGP 8x based video card, Sound Blaster Live! 5.1 sound card, 2 x 512Mb DDR RAM, Athlon XP 2600+ CPU and 2 Maxtor HDD's (40Gb master & a 160Gb slave). After assembling the above into a new ATX case, I powered up the system but there was absolutely nothing on the monitor! no boot screen, zilch! I've checked and double checked the jumper settings on the board and they're all OK. I originally had another video card that didn't produce any output either, I had thought it might been damaged en route from the US as I bought it (new) from a seller over there, but now the one listed above is giving the same result and that was bought in town earlier today. Here's the questions! Could the mobo itself be the faulty component? Does the BIOS on the board have AGP support built in? (I notice there are AGP drivers on the ASrock CD, how are you supposed to install these if you can't get an output in the first place!!) Does it matter which IDE plug goes into which drive if the jumpers on the drives are set? (i.e. grey plug to master and black plug to slave or vice versa). Finally, I forgot to mention that there are no beep codes coming from the mobo to indicate a problem, I do get beeps when I take the video card out, and I guess the beeps I get just tell me there's no AGP card installed. If you could suggest anything, please do! this is really starting to wind me up now!!

[John Prophet]

Welcome to the forum!

ok..did it boot at all..in other words did you hear the fans spinning and hard drive spinning etc and it just had no video?? or did it just do nothing at all??

-----

of..several things to consider.

first of all there is no need for drivers at all to get output from the video card at this point....it will still put out basic video with no drivers at all...that is built into the bios of all motherboards etc.

secondly the connections on the hard drives should have nothing to do with it either.

----

so here is what you should now try.

1) disconnect everything that is not vital...in other words..disconnect all the ide cables from the motherboard...take out any pci cards such as modems, sound cards etc...pull the power plugs from the optical drives etc....use only one stick of ram.

so you should be down to this stripped configuration motherboard..cpu/heatsink..video card...one stick of ram.

try it there and see if it boots to video etc


When you have it out of the case what you have to do is short the two jumpers where the power switch was conencted...just momentarily touch them to get it to boot.

-------



if not you can try any spare parts you may have...like ram etc or cpu's.

also what sometimes happens in these situations is that the motherboard is installed slightly incorrectly and a wire is pinched or somehow the motherboard is shorting against the case....so the standard procedure is to take the board back out of the case and boot it on a table on some antistatic material. I usually put it up on the motherboard box on the static-free wrapper it came in. The motherboard box helps give it some clearance for the video card to "hang down" some without hitting the table etc.


try it that way....if it doesnt boot up there then its simply a case of one of the parts being bad...could be the board...could be the cpu..could be ram..could be power supply. I doubt its the vid card if u already tried 2 different ones.

-----

also..some boards come with the cmos jumper in the "reset" position and you need to put it on the "default" or "normal" position to boot up.

also you can simply try to reset the bios to see if that makes a difference.

JP

[mad1]

When building a system I start with the minimum needed componests to get into the Bios. I then install one component at a time, to some this takes more time but can save time if there is a problem part.
All that is needed to get into the Bios screen is,
Motherboard with cpu( and cooling fan installed),,memory and video card. This can be istalled in the case or if you have a extneder for the power supply cable you can lay the motherbaord on the desk next to the case( be sure not to short anything) on nonconductive material. Connect the monitor, mouse,keyboard and power to system. Turn the power on , you should have the cpu fan running and the case fan if connected. Next you shoud get some beeps and the bios screen displayed on the monitor. If no dispaly or beeps occurs there,
1.Make sure the video card is installed correctly and the monitor cable makes a good connection to the video card.
2. If the screen is blank and there were no beeps it is possible the cpu is bad. Remove the cpu fan/heatsink assy. and check for sufficient amount of heatsink compund on the the heatsink. If you happen to have another cpu change the cpu and try booting to the bios again.
3. Possible bad seat of the memory stick or bad memory.

"Could the mobo itself be the faulty component?"Yes, make sure that none of the standoffs that the mounting screws mount to are shorted to the motherboard.

[John Prophet]

also..go here http://www.asrock.com.tw/support/index_QA.htm

and notice it expicitly says that if the cpu frequency jumper isnt in the right place that it wont boot properly...so check that out.

I am under the impression that the xp2600 comes with either a 266fsb or a 333 fsb...could it be that yours is a 266 fsb but you have it set trying to boot at 333fsb??

see the chart for settings etc http://www.asrock.com.tw/support/ins...setting_K7.pdf

[The Mad Jock]

Thanks folks! JP: the FSB for the RAM & CPU are both 333 and the mobo jumpers are set accordingly, there shouldn't be a problem with the board shorting on the chassis as the mounting holes are raised, I hadn't thought about the cpu or ram being faulty, they both came from the US as well and would have been subject to the same scanning rays that the customs used on the first video card. I wouldn't have thought customs scans would be damaging, but then again...! mod1: That sounds like a good system you've got, I think I'll strip the new PC down and start again that way! Many thanks to both, I apprieciate your time and I'll be sure to let you know how I get on

[Bill in SD, CA]

What could cause the board to short are the screwheads on the screws attaching the MB could be touching some circuitry on the MB.

Bill

[Jarhed7276]

Another thing you might check is in the bios. Go to advanced>resource configuration. Check to make sure that the Primary Graphics Adapter is set to AGP. It's hard to tell but in the manual it looks like it defaults to PCI.

[rrcn]

You didn't mention what kind of memory your using. If you are using generic memory try some quality ram and see if that will do it. I've been told that it's because the chipset is picky and that's why it wont boot.

HTH.

[Bovon]

Originally posted by The Mad Jock
there shouldn't be a problem with the board shorting on the chassis as the mounting holes are raised,

Some newer (and less expensive) cases are coming out that have pre-stamped standoffs for motherboard mounting. I had one that the area where the board sat on (standoff) was too large in diameter and shorted out a circuit trace that ran by the screw hole. I had to remove the board, put a double thickness of electrical tape on the stand offs, ice pick a hole for the screws to go thru (test the board while it was out of the case...worked fine) replaced the board back in the case and mounted 3 screws... it is not necessary to mount a board in the 6 places most have.. 1 or 2 screws hold a board very well....along with the use of plastic spacers etc. sometimes.

[John Prophet]

Quote------> Another thing you might check is in the bios. Go to advanced>resource configuration. Check to make sure that the Primary Graphics Adapter is set to AGP. It's hard to tell but in the manual it looks like it defaults to PCI.

----------


He cant do that..he doesnt have any video, lol.