New build PC won't start I'm at a complete loss

pug_

Right the parts of my new PC came yesterday (delivered from hardwareversand.de), and I spent all yesterday evening putting the damned thing together, at about 11pm I plug it in and power it on. the fans come on, I can hear the disk drives start to click, but nothing appears on the monitor, no nice friendly bios boot messages, nothing, not even a beep or two to give me clue!

So I leave it for the night and today I start troubleshooting. I figure maybe a graphics card problem, so I put in an older less powerful one that I know works (Nvidia GeForce 7300 GS) same problem.

Then I start thinking maybe the system speaker is broken and I take out all the memory, reboot and get some reassuring beeps back.

So then I take everything out of the equation that's not necessary to get a BIOS screen and try again with just a graphics card, a keyboard (ps2) 1Gig of Ram, and a processor, and still nothing happens.

My next thought is maybe a problem with the PCI-E port, so I move the graphics card to the secondary port, and finally remove it altogether and try using a trusty old PCI graphics card (GeForce4 MX) to see if it makes a difference, again nothing, fans all start spinning, everything looks and sounds as it should but the screen stays blank.

At this stage I'm running out of ideas so I resort to restoring factory defaults on the BIOS even though it's never been booted, needless to say it didn't work.

Now I'm left with a dead duck PC, and I haven't a clue what's wrong with it, nor how to try and figure out what's wrong with it. I'm afraid I'm looking at a broken motherboard but I don't want to admit defeat and face the prospect of trying to go through an RMA process with the Germans.....

Help?

2048MB-Kit OCZ DDR2 PC2-6400 Platinum Revision 2 Dual Channel, CL4 (x2)
ASUS P5K Premium/Wifi-AP, Sockel 775 Intel P35, ATX, WLAN W54G
ATX-Netzt.Seasonic M12-700 80Plus, 700Watt
Club3D 8800GTX, 768MB, NVIDIA Geforce 8800GTX, PCI-Express
Intel Core 2 Quad Q6600 boxed, 8192Kb, LGA775, 64bit, Kentsfield
Scythe Ninja Plus Sockel 478,775,754,939,940
Western Digital Raptor 150GB SATA 16MB 10000RPM

nibble

Do you know if your board is working at all? Are there any lights on the board lit?

pug_

Yup there's a green light on the board, and powering it on does work in so far as the fans spin including the cpu and graphics card, so there is definitely something going on there. Also removing the memory produces the expected beeps so it's doing it's job there too.

Anti

gotta say i havent got a breeze on this. Only thing i can thing of is a dud psu. Can you use your old one to give it a quick test ?

curtin10

I had the same problem a year ago. It was the memory. Try booting up into the BIOS. In there change the memory clock speed down to 533 Mhz. If it allows reduce the voltage to the memory by a step. Save settings and reboot. Also, if you can, get the latest BIOS revision for the board and put it on floppy or cd and load it on instead of changing memory settings that may work also. Hope this helps.

John mac

i also had a problem like this. It turned out to be a ram problem.
Could you use a different stick of ram?
(i had bad ram sent it back got replacement and this turned out to be dud also! i was tearing my hair out to find the prob)

BadCharlie

You don't need ram to boot to bios right ?
Leave the ram out all together and see what happens.
Also change PSU is another thing i would try. My brother with his 3 year old computer was having lots of problems. You would turn it on all fans would spin up but no beep or bios. It took us a long time to find out it was the PSU as we though it was working great as fans were spining up.

pug_

I have 4 sticks of ram that I've tried in various positions and numbers no difference. If I could get into the BIOS to change anything I probably wouldn't have to post here

I'll try a different PSU later on this evening when I get home.

JMURPHY3

Howdy,
I have seen this problem before and it is normally dodgy memory or incorrect memory type for the motherboard.Check if available if there is a voltage jumper for the memory on the board and if this is the case set according to manufactures spec.For the BIOS to come up, you will need memory on the board.Also check that the chip is seated properly r even take fan off chip and run system for a few seconds to see if there is heat from the chip, using tip of your finger, only for a few seconds mind!!!!!!!
If no heat from the chip, then the board or chip is faulty.You can check the chip by swapping it into a board you know to be good,if bios comes up on this other good board, then you know chip is good and board may be faulty.....

Hope this helps:D

extra-ordinary_

BadCharlie wrote:

You don't need ram to boot to bios right ?

Wrong.

pug_

Thanks for the replies, but at this stage I'm thinking it's unlikely to be memory. I have 4 sticks of RAM, and I've tried mixing and matching them in both positions to see if I can get anything to happen with no success. I can accept that there might have been 1, even 2 dodgy sticks of RAM, but 4 is a bit on the unlikely side, not impossible mind, but slightly improbable.

The RAM is also definitely compatible with the motherboard, and I know one other person that has the exact same setup working perfectly (I bought from his specs).

My real problem is trying to figure out what is wrong, I've done everything I can think of at this stage with no success, and nothing that I've tried has proved that any of the components I have are actually working, just that other similar components also won't work in the PC. The last thing I can try is a different PSU, and if that doesn't work I'm out of components to swap as I don't have another compatible motherboard/CPU. Other things I've tried but haven't mentioned are trying different keyboards (both ps2 and usb) and monitors (both CRT and flatscreen).

Auvers

did you try testing one stick at a time? just one more thing, did you make sure you CMOS jumper is in the correct position?

pug_

Yup to both questions, there's only one jumper on the motherboard, and I had to move it to reset the BIOS to it's default, moved it back again after made no difference

MarkR

Take out all the memory and try to boot. It should beep to advise you that there's no memory detected. If you're not getting any beep then your board or cpu is faulty.

Just spotted that you are getting some beeps. Check out this link, might give you an idea of what's the problem.

Beep codes.

Auvers

whats your location? I have a spare 775 board if you want a loan of it & u live close to the Swords area.

MarkR wrote:

Take out all the memory and try to boot. It should beep to advise you that there's no memory detected. If you're not getting any beep then your board or CPU is faulty.[/URL]

Mark you should really read the post first he has already tried that.

extra-ordinary_

pug_ wrote:

and I know one other person that has the exact same setup working perfectly (I bought from his specs).

Have you given this guy a shout?

Anti

extra-ordinary_ wrote:

Have you given this guy a shout?

Try your ram in his machine, and his ram in your machine. If it boots for him, but still dosent for you, then its a dead psu,mobo or cpu.

dazftw

read through this quickly so it may have been mentioned... did you try run the pc outside the case?

I had the very exact same problem with you even resetting bios wouldnt work for me.. so I got the advice of awhir to boot it outside the case(on the mobo box) me thinking that it wouldnt work I tried it last and thats what worked... try it outside the case most likely something shorting the motherboard...

Give it a try

Sorry if its been mentioned...

ve

When I built the machine I'm working from right now the exact same thing happened me. The fans and disks spun up, the status lights were green on the motherboard, but nothing showed up on the screen.

I removed the CPU and reseated it again. Turned on the machine, and it came alive in all it's glory and hasn't given me any trouble since.

Depends on what motherboard you have, but some boards (like mine) if you connect up simple PC speakers to the box and power it on, the default behavior is to give you spoken audible alerts describing the problem. For example CPU not seated, or something up with RAM, etc. If you have it use it.

Of course I didn't realize this until after I had the machine a few days and was playing around in the BIOS.

Best of luck

requiem1

do the fans stay on? maybe something is shorting your board... try reseating your board on the spacers and make sure theres no screws caught in between the board and the case as it could be causing it to short. let us know how you get on....

pug_

Yippie skippy, it's working!!!

Turns out to be a faulty PSU in the end, stuck in my current PC's 400W one and it booted just fine. Unfortunately that means I won't be able to power my graphics card until the RMA comes through, but at least the damned thing is working now, and I actually know what was wrong with it

Actually got it fixed last night but I was too excited messing with it to post a reply. Thanks for the help folks!

Anti

pug_ wrote:

Yippie skippy, it's working!!!

Turns out to be a faulty PSU in the end, stuck in my current PC's 400W one and it booted just fine. Unfortunately that means I won't be able to power my graphics card until the RMA comes through, but at least the damned thing is working now, and I actually know what was wrong with it

Actually got it fixed last night but I was too excited messing with it to post a reply. Thanks for the help folks!

Exactally what i said.

extra-ordinary_

Yeh Anti, you tell him.:D

Playboy

Im having the same problem. My psu died so i ordered a new one .. wanted a direct replacement (680 watt purepower thermaltake) for the one I was using so bought one on ebay second hand as they had stopped making it. The company who I bought it from claimed it had been tested and offered a warranty on it. When I installed the psu I had the same problem .. fans coming on etc. no beeps. Tried swapping out the memory and no change. Dismantled the whole machine and put it back together and still the same problem. Checked to make sure nothing was shorting the motherboard and still no change. Took out the bios battery and put it back in. Came to the conclusion that I must have damaged the motherboard somehow so I ordered a new and better one .. I thought what the hell I might as well upgrade. And since its my birthday I decided to upgrade my chip from a 3.4 ghz pentium to the E6700 dual core. Now after reading this thread I find out that it might have been the feckin psu all along!!! Arrgghh!