Serious Computer Problem

[Optimus Prime]

OK, bought all the parts on Sunday, put 'em in, flicked the switch, computer boots up, one bleep (Award BIOS, apparently means system power is fine), but the monitor will not turn on and show the BIOS.

The monitor works.

I think it is the AGP card (the monitor has power, but it is a yellow LED instead of GREEN).

My Dad says it could be any... Motherboard, Graphics Card or CPU.

ASUS A78NX-X
AMD Athlon 2500 Barton Retail (333)
Geforce 4 Ti4200
Maxtor 7200 80GB
300W PSU
LiteOn 52x CD-ROM
512MB DDR RAM (333)

I've swapped out the RAM, taken it out fully, used one stick at a time and am not sure what to do now, because the problem is that I do not know where the problem comes from!

Any help would be GREATLY appreciated, thanks.

[thePh@r@oh]

have you tried a different vid card like a pci vid card? and does the board have onboard video?

[Optimus Prime]

I'll try that when I get home from work, cheers.

[ale_x13]

make sure the AGP card is seated properly, but its probably the agp card (or the AGP slot on your mobo) but usually if the mobo's with award bios cant detect the video card there is one long beep followed by two short beeps (although i heard award changed this with the a7n8-x to some sort of voice telling the problem)

[Bill in SD, CA]

If it is an Asus A7N8X-VM-UAY board you may have to disabled the on-board video via a jumper. Of the 4 boards Asus makes with this model # this is the only one with video.

Otherwise, reseat the card, try a different one, and re-check all cabling including the monitor.

Good luck,

Bill

[Optimus Prime]

This is a new motherboard, and the AGP slot comes with a white clip... The Card is a REALLY tight fit into the motherboard, so i may have damaged the board during installation (although everything seems to be fine).

I'll insert my PCI Geforce 4 MX440 tonight, thanks for the help all.

There is no Onboard Video on this motherboard (It's the really budget version of the A78NX).

[wju425]

Did you boot to safe mode to see if you get the video? If you did then change the settings to 640 x 480 at 16 colors. That way you can boot to normal and have video. Go to the video settings and change the adapter settings (advanced) to adapter default. There after rebooting you can use your favorite settings.

\o/ Billy

[Optimus Prime]

The thing was, was that I couldn't even see the BIOS! The Screen was just blank.

Well, it was a faulty stick of RAM i got from Microdirect, funnily enough, the motherboard, which had a crappy AGP slot that was really stuck tight and the case that nearly decapitated me was from Microdirect too... I won't be buying from them in the near future...

Thanks everyone for the help, i've got my brand spanking new PC up and running .