Asus K7M booting problem - help!

[theshamu]

This is very strange, but I have an older PC that is Asus K7M board with Athalon 650 CPU. It was working fine until I took out the 16X CD-RW and replaced it with a 32X drive. Now it would not start, and there's no POST -- the fan would come on, and all lights (HD/CD/Keyboard) would stay on but no display on CRT!

I thought it was memory, but moved/reinserted/swapped with no effect. Could it the CPU is dead? But in that case would the fan comes on? I have not tried to remove the CPU since it is located under the PS and I'm too tired tonight.

Any thoughts on what could have happened? I did do one thing wrong - I think the machine was in hibernation mode when I took it apart, but that should just cause a corrupted hibernation file, shouldn't it?

Any help is much appreciated!

K7M board with Athalon 650
Antec 300W PS
256 MB PC133 generic memory
PCI video (ATI Rage Pro)
IBM 20 GB HD
Lite-On 32X CD-RW
Zip 100 IDE drive
NIC
modem
TV tuner card

 

[theshamu]

Hmm, no one offers a clue?

Basically my questions are:

1. Will an Athalon cpu die all of a sudden?
2. Will motherboard still boots (at least the power comes on) when the cpu is dead? I think it would not if I REMOVE the cpu.

Anybody?

 

[GunDog]

While, I dont think just changing a cdrom would cause this type of problem, I would remove the cmos battery for an hour. I also have a K7M with a 600, when I play around with the bios to much, it does the same thing you describe. Removing the cmos battery has fixed it everytime for me.
I would also make certain the ribbon cable is secured correctly. (again a long shot).
Did you bump the video card?

 

[theshamu]

GunDog, thanks for the tip! I did figure it was a clearingCMOS-type of problem, but for a while I couldn't figure out how the heck to clear CMOS - there's no jumper! Anyway, I finally found on another board several discussion on problems that are identical, and the solution was to hit RESET multiple times. For me, I had to remove the RESET Switch cable from motherboard!! Now everything is fine after I cleared CMOS.

What a strange problem. I knew this board was picky on memory chips, PS and even keyboard. But I had no idea it didn't like the reset sw!:disgust:

Anyway, thanks again GunDog!