[fatboystu56]

I am building a new pc but there is something wrong and I don’t know what it is. I know my power supply is good because everything comes on (all fans, hard drive, CD drive); it’s not the memory or the hard drive. Everything comes on with the power button but nothing comes up on the monitor in fact the monitor light is still bronze. When I turn the computer on the hard drive light stays on and the hard drive doesn’t boot up all the way until I unplug the Ide cable, same for the CD drive. The MSG Led has yet to come on. What does that sound like? Is it the processor or the motherboard?

Edited by fatboystu56, 15 February 2006 - 07:25 PM.

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Welcome to G2G fatboystu56

OK, firstly I need some specs please - cpu type, motherboard make/model, video card & ram specs etc.
Also the fact that the board, fans & drives have power to them DOESN'T mean that the power supply is adequate. It probably is fine but let me know what it's power rating is anyway.

Secondly, can you explain what you meant when you said 'the hard drive doesn’t boot up all the way until I unplug the Ide cable'.

By 'boot up' do you mean spin up? Are you unplugging the IDE cable while the system is still powered up?

[Samm]

Welcome to G2G fatboystu56

OK, firstly I need some specs please - cpu type, motherboard make/model, video card & ram specs etc.
Also the fact that the board, fans & drives have power to them DOESN'T mean that the power supply is adequate. It probably is fine but let me know what it's power rating is anyway.

Secondly, can you explain what you meant when you said 'the hard drive doesn’t boot up all the way until I unplug the Ide cable'.

By 'boot up' do you mean spin up? Are you unplugging the IDE cable while the system is still powered up?

[Hammm]

Have you set the jumpers on the hard drive? That happened to me the first time as well, lol sad i know but you should always check everything. Maybe you've got the Hard drive plugged in with the CD rom cable and drivers are wasted. Maybe it's you're gfx card? did you install it properly and have you got the molex-power converter cable plugged in if it's a high end gfx card.

[fatboystu56]

Right now all that I have plugged in to my ECS VIA P4X400 Socket 478 ATX P4 Motherboard w/Snd &LAN motherboard is my 600W-Max Quiet Dual Fan ATX PoWork PS w/SATA power supply my Pentium 4 socket 478 3.2 ghz Processor + heatsink my PNY Optima DDR SDRAM and some fans. I have reset all the jumpers and unplugged everything but the power switch and it is all out of the case and I still can’t get it to work. All the fans come on but no beep or no monitor reaction.

[Samm]

OK, can you try this please :

Wear an anti-static band or discharge your static by touching a metal surface.
Disconnect the external power lead from the computer, then disconnect the main ATX power connector from the motherboard.

Remove then reinstall the AGP video card. Make sure that the video card is fully & evenly inserted into the slot. If there ia a plastic retention clip at the end of the slot, then this must be clipped into place.

Make sure you have the case/system speaker or buzzer connected to the motherboard

Remove all the ram modules then reinsert just one of the modules into ram slot 1.

Locate the jumper (JP1) nearest the cmos battery. Move the jumper cap so that it covers pins 2-3 & leave in place for about 30 seconds. Then replace the cap so that it covers pins 1-2.

Make sure you have no drive cabling at all connected to the board & no external devices except keyboard/monitor.

Reconnect the main 20 pin ATX power connector & the square 4 pin (ATX2 / ATX 12V) power connector to the motherboard.

Power the system on again & let me know what happens.


BTW, which model of motherboard do you have? From what I can tell, its probably the L4VXA2 or the L4VXAG if it has the Via P4X400 chipset.

Also, does your P4 support H/T or not?

[fatboystu56]

I did all of that step by step and nothing happened. The mother board is an Elitegroup L4VXA2. The guy I got my p4 from said it supported HT but there are no printings on the processor about HT. My keyboard lights blinked but still no beep from the mother board. I feel like it’s the mother board.

[Samm]

OK, to find out what the cpu is, disconnect the power from the motherboard & discharge your static. Remove the heatsink & then the cpu. Do not touch the pins on the cpu.
On the top of the processor you should see a a model number. It will look something like this : SLxxx (where xxx will be a combination of 3 letters or numbers)

While the cpu is out of the socket, check that none of the pins are bent, then replace the cpu & heatsink/fan.

Remove the all the ram & the video card, so that only the processor+heatsink/fan, speaker etc are installed.

Looking through the manual for your motherboard (assuming I've got the right model), I couldn't find any reference to where the speaker connects. Can you please confirm whether your board has a built in buzzer or does it have a speaker connection?

If it does have an external (case) speaker connected, make sure you have connected it correctly.

Power the system on again. Obviously you can't connect the monitor as there's no video card but listen for beeps. There should be a lot of them!

Can you also confirm please -
(1) that your video card is AGP 3.0 & uses 1.5V?
(2) if your motherboard has a jumper next to the ram slots labelled JP2, that this is set to AUTO (pins 1-2 I believe)

[fatboystu56]

I did all of that and got no beep. my cpu is SL7KC

[Hammm]

yer, interesting, um............you could try and make sure the motherboard isn't shorted but i'm out of ideas

[RjBass]

Ok first, im not part of the staff here and am by no means an expert, so please take my idea lightly.

I just very recently had a very similar problem with an upgrade to the pc I am working on right now. After installing the new motherboard, cpu and getting all the other components installed I couldnt get my pc to boot up. No beep, no bios, nothing. All the fans came on as well as the hd's, cd roms etc... but it just wouldnt start.

After an attempt to power it up failed, while holding down the power button I powered the cpu off, but on accident i hit the switch again powering it back up, and magicly it booted.

This CPU still has that problem, if I dissconnect it from the power source to make any internal modifications, when i go to plug it back in and boot it up it wont start, so i turn it off via the main power switch and then immediatly turn it back on and it works. I still cant explain it, but it gets the job done.

Now I seriously doubt that this same approach would apply in your case, but if all else fails it probly wont hurt.

And while im at it, if any of you experts could possibly explain why my pc does this, maybe give me a little insight i would appreciate it.

[Samm]

yer, interesting, um............you could try and make sure the motherboard isn't shorted but i'm out of ideas

Thanks for the suggestion Hammm, it's a good one but we've already eliminated that possibility by removing the board from the case completely!

fatboystu :

The cpu identifier (SL7KC) is the Pentium 4 3.20E GHz, 800MHz FSB, (Prescott core) with H/T

This is unfortunate because your motherboard only supports Pentium 4's that use 533MHz FSB (max) and have the Northwood core.

In short, I'm not promising that both the motherboard & the cpu are in perfect working order (one or both could well be damaged) but either way, the two are not going to work together because they are incompatible. I suspect that this is reason for your problems! You need to return one or other of the components & get it replaced with a compatible one.

[fatboystu56]

what do you thank about this motherboard?

NEW MATSONIC MS9377C+ P4 SOCKET 478 MB LIKE ASUS P4S800
Support High Density Memory, Prescott CPU, 8 USB Ports

[Samm]

To be honest, I'm not very familiar with Matsonic as a manufacturer, I don't think you can buy Matsonic boards over here in the UK very easily but I've had a look at their website & the motherboard manual for this product...

Pros:
*It looks like it will support your cpu
*It has 5 PCI slots & AGP 8x

Cons:

*It's got an SIS chipset (this is a personal thing but I don't like them)

*Its very limited in terms of upgradeability - it has no sata controllers, only 2 DIMM slots (2GHz max), no dual channel support, no pci-e

* Matsonics online support is extremely limited - driver/bios/manual downloads are available but their knowledge base/FAQ section is virtually non-existent.

It's your call but you should be able to find a better one even if you're on a tight budget.

[Hammm]

that's a problem now, you've got the ones with pins and they don't make any with pins now, personally i don't like Intel but it looks like you're stuck. i have a similar problem, i have an aging Athlon XP and Skt A. no Skt A mobos with PCI-E will me made so i'm left in the dust much like you. it wouldn't really matter about SATA because by the time you will need SATA most, you'll need to do a whole upgrade much like me*sigh* never catch up on technology, just get something that does the job and does it well and keep it until it is truely obeselete, like a P3 is now adays.

[fatboystu56]

what are you telling me about pins?