Blank screen at boot-up. Help!

[barnett25]

Hey guys, I really need your help. I just got the parts for my computer today and put it together. But the computer wont post or enter bios. All I get when I power it up is a black screen. The fans are all working though.
My system is:
soltek sl-k8an2e-gr nforce3 250gb
athlon 64 3200+ retail box
2x512 crucial ram
2x80gb pata HDs (Western Digital)
2 cd rw drives
400w psu that came with my thermaltake tsunami case
old pci vidio card (till my 9800pro comes tommorow)

This is the first system I put together and am at a loss. If anyone knows what I should check for please let me know!
Thanks.

 

[Atodd]

Does the computer beep when turn it on? If it doesn't then that would help establish a basis from where to go and what to loook at. If it doesn't beep, check the system speaker first. After that, it might be a memory issue.

 

[barnett25]

It does not beep on startup.

 

[Lonyo]

Have you got a different PSU you could try?
Does your vid card support AGP 4x/8x?
Is your system speaker plugged in?

I have had issues with PSU's before (totally random issues).
I had a PSU, removed it to upgrade, and the updgrade was messed up a bit, then went totally belly up, so I replaced with the old PSU, and that showed the same problem.

I then hooked up both PSU's to a different system, and they both worked with no issues.
Then I plugged them back into my system, with no changes made to the system, and they worked fine there too.
There was no reason for them to not work, or start working again, as no changes were made, they just randomly decided to work/not work.

What I go was: Mobo power LED was on, power button started up fans/drives etc, all OK.
Screen did not initialise at all. Nothing happened beyond drives flashing. No beep error codes either.
But there was no tangiable issue.

 

[barnett25]

I also just noticed that the keyboard is not getting power.
But the mouse (usb) does.

Edit. The keyboard does have power (num lock light works) when the computer is furst turned on, but after a couple of seconds the light wont come on. The usb mouse stays on the whole time.

 

[barnett25]

I unhooked everything except 1 stick of ram and tried to power on. The computer made a long beep sound. I assume becuase there was no vidio card. I then tried the card in another computer and it worked. I am going to try the other stick of ram next.

 

[barnett25]

Well, unless my motherboard just doesn't like pci video cards I think my motherboard is bad. The card works in another computer but not this one. Here are some of the other things I found out.

If I take the video card out I get a long beep that gets kind of choppy at the end. But with the video card installed I get no beep. The monitor goes off of sleep mode and lights up, but with a solid black screen. The led on the motherboard does light up when the computer is on. All fans, including the cpu fan operate normally. The CD-RW drives both light up and flash a few times on start up. The front mount (well, actually top mount) USB seems to be getting power as my mouse lights up. The keyboard is also getting power, but becomes unresponsive to the caps lock and num lock a few seconds after the computer is turned on. I tried each stick of ram by itself in different slots with no luck.

My 9800pro comes tomorrow so when it gets here I will try it in place of the pci video card and see if that makes a difference (doesn't seem likely) If not, I guess I am about to have my first experience with newegg's RMA dept.

If anyone has any advice, please post.
Thanks.

 

[barnett25]

Just to update anyone who cares, I got the system running.
I put in the 9800pro today and it started up just fine. Then I thought that I had another problem with the motherboard because the mouse wasn't working. The mouse would light up, but not move. And if I turned on the computer with the mouse plugged in it wouldn't make it through POST. Its embarasing, but it turns out that this was because I had fried the mouse when I plugged it into the front USB port, which I had accidently wired wrong.

What are you laughing for? It's not funny......really.....

Anyway, after I plugged in another mouse (and double checked the usb wires) the computer worked like a dream. I still don't know why it didn't like the pci video card, but I guess it doesn't matter now.