Topic: PC not reaching post

[alternator]

haha... nightmare!

[Sandra]

Looks like you were "Short" of a few things Sean  

[ketamininja]

mmm.... "short" of a few risers?  

Was that board working, or was that the reason it was being taken apart?

[Adept]

mmm.... "short" of a few risers?  

Was that board working, or was that the reason it was being taken apart?

The customer made it himself and couldn't understand why he couldn't get it to boot.

Miraculously, once we added the requisite risers, the machine worked perfectly. One lucky bloke

[alternator]

Ok, it was more bad news today. Replaced the processor and still wont reach post.

Completely took it apart and re-assembled!

There are no beeps what-so-ever when firing this up? Its a completely new mobo and cpu!?

I have had it so its just motherboard and processor on the machine but still nothing? HDD spins up and stays at a constant speed.

If I have just mobo, processor, memory and graphics card it doesn't reach post or anything  

I have sold my old processor to my bro in law and he popped in his system - it worked FINE!

I have tried with one dimm (alternating between my two dimms thinking it could be memory related), but still nothing.

Seeing as I don't use graphics, Im going to sell my new mobo and get one with on-board graphics as that will do the job plenty well for me tbh. It has surely gotta be graphics card related? Even without beeps :S

If it doesn't work then, Im just going to sell it off in bits on ebay, or as a faulty 3000+ system that has some sort of conflict somewhere that bill gates himself couldn't solve haha!

Any other idea's, or do you think I am on the right lines?

By the way, all power cables etc are plugged in, and the mobo is already on risers seated in the case

[Sandra]

I had a problem with a 2500 Barton CPU just after xmas that wouldnt run on 266 ram it had to be on 333 on that particular mobo.
It did beep though.
It couldnt be something like that could it, mismatched speed of RAM/FSB/CPU ?
You said youd had it running in another pc though didnt you  

[alternator]

Hiya again Sandra...

I don't think so, the Asus mainboard supports 333 FSB speeds with 333 processors. I have the AMD Athlon 3000+ (333 spec processor) with 512MB DRR 2700 (again 333) and yup, it was running absolutely fine before I switched the cases over. Then both of the PC's failed to reach post  

As you say, you'd expect it to beep. Its in a chieftech x-style tool free case at the moment which has no speaker, but I've had it in the other case, all screwed in, with the speaker connected... not one beep? I thought that too at one point, which is why I went for this particular configuration of 333 spec componants!

One thing I would say though, is I noticed that the graphics card fan doesn't move. I know on the nvidia cards the fan has two speeds, but I don't know about the ATI 9700? Thing is, I would have thought that I would have had this problem before if the fan had just stopped working and the graphics gpu had burnt out

Its really odd... LOL! At least when I fix it we'll know if it ever happens again HAHA!

[Sandra]

Funnily enough it was an ASUS board that supported 266/333 and 400, it just happened that the guy had 512 mbs of 266 DDR and we were using that to keep the cost down.
It was only by chance that I spotted in the manual when trying to work out what was wrong, that it said that if using a 333 CPU that it had to be 333 RAM  
Its not the CPU speed in the BIOS is it thats been set too high, thats another problem I had recently with another ASUS board and Barton CPU, I had set that at 2200 not 1833 and even though it appeared ok it wouldnt load XP although it did load 98  

[alternator]

Yeah, I read up on that before buying the board. I've always liked Asus boards. This one has no jumpers as its supposed to do everything itself, bar make the coffee.

I don't know about the bios. I thought that it could be a possibility? Although it is supposed to do everything itself you can never be sure. Problem is, I can't get as far as the bios as it just wont do anything. It turns on, the fans spin, the HDD powers up but the monitor just won't come on from standby. I've left the bios battery out for 3 hours and retested, nothing. Theres not even any jumpers to reset the bios on this board.

How likely is it to be the graphics card in your opinion? You don't sound too convinced?

[Sandra]

It could be I suppose but wasnt that running ok in the original case  

[alternator]

Yup, was running fine.

This is the motherboard tech stuff:


Product Type  Mainboard  
Form Factor  ATX  
Width  30.5 cm  
Depth  24.5 cm  
Compatible Processors  Athlon, Duron, Athlon XP  
Processor Socket  Socket A  
Chipset Type  VIA Apollo KT400  
Max Bus Speed  333 MHz  
Installed Qty (Max Supported)  0 ( 1 )  
Supported RAM Technology  DDR SDRAM  
RAM Installed ( Max )  0 MB / 3 GB (max)  
Supported RAM Speed  DDR266/PC2100, DDR200/PC1600, DDR333/PC2700, DDR400/PC3200  
RAM Features  Unbuffered  
Storage Controller  IDE  
Controller Interface Type  DMA/ATA-133 (Ultra) Fast Drives  
Audio Output  Sound card  
Signal Processor  VIA VT8235  
Sound Output Mode  5.1 channel surround  
Networking  Network adapter - Ethernet, Fast Ethernet  
BIOS Features  DMI 2.0 support, WfM 2.0 support, ASUS MyLogo, JumperFree, SMBIOS 2.3 support, ASUS EZ Flash  
Hardware Monitoring  CPU overheating protection  
Sleep / Wake Up  Keyboard wake up, wake on modem (WOM), suspend to RAM (STR), wake on LAN (WOL), mouse wake up, wake on PCI device, wake on ring (WOR)  
Hardware Features  Chassis intrusion detection, CrashFree BIOS, C.P.R. (CPU Parameter Recall)  
Expansion Slots Total (Free)  1 ( 1 ) x processor - Socket A ¦ 1 ( 1 ) x AGP 8x ( 1.5 V ) ¦ 3 ( 3 ) x memory - DIMM 184-PIN ¦ 6 ( 6 ) x PCI  
Interfaces  2 x storage - DMA/ATA-133 (Ultra) Fast Drives - 40 PIN IDC ¦ 4 x Hi-Speed USB - 4 PIN USB Type A ¦ 1 x parallel - IEEE 1284 (EPP/ECP) - 25 pin D-Sub (DB-25) ¦ 1 x serial - RS-232 - 9 pin D-Sub (DB-9) ¦ 1 x mouse - generic - 6 pin mini-DIN (PS/2 style) ¦ 1 x keyboard - generic - 6 pin mini-DIN (PS/2 style) ¦ 1 x storage - floppy interface - 34 PIN IDC ¦ 1 x network - Ethernet 10Base-T/100Base-TX - RJ-45 ¦ 1 x audio - line-In - mini-phone stereo 3.5 mm ¦ 1 x audio - line-out - mini-phone stereo 3.5 mm ¦ 1 x microphone - input - mini-phone mono 3.5 mm ¦ 1 x audio - SPDIF ¦ 2 x audio - line-In - 4 PIN MPC  

A pic is at http://www.dabs.com/images/uk/products/Motherboards_Mainboards/2J5F_large_150x150.jpg


Have a butchers... anything in your experience that I could do to the mainbaord itself or at least try??? LOL! Yer a star btw, giving techie support at this time in the morn

[Sandra]

Just looking at the PDF of the mobo manual for the ones I built this year and I think its the same model A7V8X-X at least it looks the same and uses the same chipsets as yours.
The graphic card is 1.5 volt although it ran ok on a 128Mb (8X) DDR GF4 MX4000+TV Out which was 3.3v although the first one turned out to be a faulty card, unfortunately that was also the one with the 266 ddr not the 333 so it took two visits to the shop to get the correct components to get it up and running.
Whats the voltage of the ATI card ?
Have you another card you could try in it ?

[alternator]

Just checked on the website, the graphics card appears to be of the 1.5 volt variety... the 8x AGP type...

I havent got another card, no. TBH if I got one with on board graphics then at least we could get the graphics card out of the equation, and if it works, then I could try adding the graphics card to the spec, and changing the bios settings (supposing I can get that far   )

LOL it should be so simple. Ive had every componant out of that system, and it all seems to work OK, apart from the graphics card and memory, as no-one has a board that will support 2700 spec memory and the AGP graphics card. Everyones on board with Baby mobo's ...

[Sandra]

Just found this in the PDF manual, although if you cant get it to the bios scren to set it to UC, if needed I dont see how you can do anything about it  
Do you know if your card supports this feature ?

[alternator]

ah hah! Thats something new. I've just looked through my manual and its in there too. I looked through the manual of my K7NCR18 motherboard, and its default is "disable" but the A7V8X-X instruction manual doesn't say whether its defaulted to enable or disable. Assuming this is the problem, as you say without getting into the bios I can't do anything. Is there any way to boot up with more basic values on this mainboard? I can't see anything?

The manual does say that there is a clear RTC RAM jumper on the mainboard which I didn't notice. Im not by the PC at the moment otherwise I would have a look! Might be worth setting the jumper to clear status for a few seconds without a battery in and re-testing?