Asus A7M266 befuddled... major boot up problem.. advice?

[Ashton5]

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A7M266 Befuddled.... no boot expert advice?
First post here so forgive me if I leave out some normal info. I have built many many ASUS systems but this is my first with the A7M266

root of the problem is if I turn on the power after the pc has been off a decent amount of time I get fans spinning, a little HD activity then nothing but a blank screen. Here is the hardware I have. It gets much much more interesting so read on.

TB 1.2 GHz 266 fsb boxed version
Antec KS282 case w/300 W
Asus V7100 geforce2 AGP
Corsair pc2100 256 MB
Maxtor HD
CD (cant recall brand on this system)
Dlink NIC card (acts up with and without card)
Asus A7M266 (obviously) V1.4 1.004 bios

Sooooo I try and boot up with this set up and I get nothing but a blank screen no video at all... no floppy seek at boot up... just a tad activity from the hard drive and all fans are spinning. I have tried hitting the power button and reset button repeatidly as I have seen in other posts but to no avail.. Now here is where it gets interesting. If I remove the asus V7100 and put in an old trident PCI card the system boots up fine /boggle. If I remove the trident and now put in the Asus V7100... the system now works fine. Reboots , powers up etc all fine and dandy. If I turn it off for a good amount of time and boot up.. wham right back to blank screen.

I have tried booting with the floppy, HD and cd all unplugged and also removed the NIC card. Still no video life or activity.

Anyone seen anything like this before?

I am stumped.

Also I have switched the power connector to the reset connector and still get the blank screen so doesnt appear to be the case connections...

so bad MB? (beyond me why it works after it boots up once correctly) bad PSupply?

I have set the bios back to default as well with no help gained.

Thanks in advance for any helpful advice..


BTW I just now booted up after it has been sitting awhile. I got the blank screen (with agp installed).. Turned it off and then back on and it ACTUALLY booted up this time so maybe the pci card is just a coincidence... Still clueless about the blank screen on cold boot up..

 

[Buz2b]

You might be on the right track with the video or maybe that is just another symptom. Right now it looks like the Power Supply could be having some effect. Possibly the PCI card doesn't draw as much power as the AGP. In looking up the "recommended/approved AMD power supplies, the Antec 300 watt PS,(either of the 2 versions), is only rated to 900 MHz Athlon. You are well past that. I am assuming of course that is what you are using since you didn't specify. I know you stripped it down to bare essentials, but how many fans, etc are still drawing power? It might be that booting with the PCI card allows the PS and components to warm up, making it easier to boot when you put back in the AGP card. Heck, maybe that is grasping at straws, as I don't think warming up a PS and system makes it easier to boot, but it might be worth it to try a different PS. At least you could then eliminate that possibility. The only other thing might be a short somewhere involving the motherboard and the case. The pushing and pulling of video card installation and removal could cause this to manifest itself. Good luck.

 

[Ashton5]

Thanks for the reply. I am running two additional cooling fans to answer your question. next time I boot up and it isnt working I will unplug power from both fans and as many non essential pieces of hardware to see if that helps. My next step will be to remove the motherboard and resinstall in case I have a short somewhere to the case. And also going to try another powersupply granted it wont be an approved one either but may give me a better idea if that is the root cause. Thanks again.