Asus P4P800 SE-Not posting

[Catch20two]

I'm new to pc building but have learned a lot from this forum. First, I want to thank you all for a great source of information.

My problem is this. I just built my first computer about a month ago. Two days ago, booted up plugged in my usb flash drive to grab a file to take to work and got an error saying USB Power Surge. I have 2 other USB devices connected: a printer and a scanner. All my USB connections were not working. I unplugged my flash drive and rebooted and the computer hung up on shut down. I forced the shut down and rebooted with not problem. I plugged in the flash drive and got the same message. I tried different usb ports with the same results. As long as I did not plug in the flash drive it would shut down fine. If I plugged in the drive it would hang on shut down.

I left for work in that state. My wife then calls me at work saying the computer won't boot up. I get home and it doesn't even post. After trying some different things I call Asus Tech Support. Since I have no other computer to test the different components in, they say to disconnect every device and take out the CPU, memory, & video card, reset the cmos and turn it on. If it beeps, it's not the motherboard and start connecting devices one at a time and trun on until I no longer hear the beep. Well, it didn't beep with just the motherboard connected alone.

My problem is, the system rarely beeped at all. I've read in another thread that Asus did away with system beeps on boot up but they're starting to use them again so I never gave the lack of confirmation beeps a second thought. I've read about a similar problem in a different thread for their AV8 board but it seemed mostly due to bios upgrades there. I had not upgraded the bios on this board.

Here are my system specs:

Asus P4P800 SE
3.2EGhz Prescott
1 Ghz Kinston Value Ram x 2
550w Antec True Control
Nvidia 6800 Ultra

I have not had any heat issues (as per Asus Probe...mid 40c degrees max). I cool with 5 case fans and a Zalman CNPS7000B-Cu cpu cooler.

I'm not sure if the USB problem is just a symptom of something more or was the cause of this problem, but I'm at a loss here on what to do. Any advice would be greatly appreciated.

Thank you!

 

[Catch20two]

Adding some information I forgot to mention that may be helpful.

I had not had any problems with the system prior to Tuesday. The board is getting power. All the fans turn on, the board's LED lights up, the drives spin, etc. I unplugged everything uneeded for boot up and still no post so I don't think it's a power issue.

I've called Asus Tech support back with the lack of beeb response and they told me to RMA the board. I am hesitant to do that thinking it may be other issues, but that is probably going to be my next step.

One more question, if I replace the board with a duplicate one, will I have to reinstall the OS? If so, will it be possible to just install over top of the old one or will I have to reformat the drive?

Thanks for any advice.

 

[Mucker]

RMA sounds like your best option. I had an Abit IC7 with exactly the same symptoms as yours that wouldn't post after hours of troubleshooting. The board I got back from rma fired up first try. If the replacement board is identical to the board you are rma'ing, you will be able to do the swap without needing to do anything else. Just make sure to setup up your bios like you had it before (like disabling onboard sound, etc....), and plug all the pci cards and drives in the exact same way.

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