I'm a newbie in building computers so I need some serious help here.
Here's my situation:
A few days ago I got all the parts and started building the system. It worked well first try. I didn't change anything in BIOS, installed XP. I left it running for a few hours then shut it down for the day. The day after, I boot it up again, it was running fine, shut it down and moved the case a bit. When I tried to boot it up again, the monitor goes blank (looks like it's on standby), while all the fans in the box are running 100%.
I checked to make sure everything's connected tightly (they are), disconnected and reconnected some parts again just to make sure. Power up => blank.
So I took the components apart down to just motherboard + cpu + video.
Boot it up => monitor blank, no sound/beeps
Put 1 stick of RAM in => magically worked! I can get to the BIOS on screen now, and the fans are running slower. Checked temperature at BIOS, seems ok.
Powered it down and put the 2nd stick of RAM in => still work!
Put hard drive in => monitor blank, fan 100% again
Take hard drive out (back to the earlier working configuration, but...) => monitor blank, fan 100% again
So what could be the problem here? How come it worked with the 2 sticks in, then it doesn't work afterward? What should I check next? I've searched some of the posts here and they say it might be a power supply problem. How do I check that?
Thank you for your help.