cannot enter BIOS setup

[Tinkerman]

Hello, I am in the process of putting together my new rig, I finally get all the parts, and what do you know; problems...

Here's what I have to work with:

Coolermaster centurion 5 case
Antec Trueblue 2.0 480w PSU
MSI K8N Neo4 939 mobo
AMD Athlon 64 3700+ sandiego 939 processor
Thermaltake silent 939 k8 cpu cooler w/ as5
2x1 gb PQI dual channel memory
ATI x800xl PCI-e x16
WD 160gb HDD
3.5" floppy
NEC DVD burner
Dell ultrasharp 2005fp LCD flatscreen monitor


Whew..I got it all put together (my second time building a computer from the ground up), cables braided, plugs plugged, jumpers jumped, chips seated, CMOS cleared, and all that hoo rod and hoe jockey. I gathered my resolve, and reached my finger out for the moment of truth. I press. 1 beep. Everything fires up, fans roar (no too loudly) to life, and LED's shine, monitor registers and shows me a pretty silver splash startup screen. I am feeling very happy. I move my finger down and start pressing the delete key to enter setup. The computer proceeds to ignore me, and I recognize the futility of my efforts just as it starts click-beeping (whatever) through the sys speaker everytime I press the delete key. (or any other key)
I'm like WTF?!?!?!?!!?!!!! :|
I proceed to check my wire connections, re-clear the CMOS, and try again, same thing. After another couple of frantic tries I figure out that I can get it to go to the post screen if I push TAB. It says it recognizes my RAM, CPU, DVD, HDD and then just sits there, not making it to the part where it yells at me for having a non-system disk.

I suspect the motherboard, it is the only thing that I did not buy new or OEM. I got it off ebay and it was supposed to be new, but came unwrapped (in most of the original packaging), with all accessories, but had no antistatic bag, the mobo itself was wrapped in bubblewrap, and the box was missing the cardboard shelf so the accessory box was sitting right on the top of the mobo. A couple of IDE pins were slightly bent

I just got done writing a letter to the seller, who is no longer a registered user at ebay (he had 1000+ feedback, so it came as a surprize). He has yet to respond.

So what do you guys/girls think? Am I well F*ed and far from home here or what?
please help

 

[bendixG15]

How about if you go to the mobo web site and download/read the mobo manual ??

I assume you tried F2 and all the other Function keys

 

[cker]

Good point on the F2 -- I've seen the key for BIOS setup be F2, Delete, Escape, F10, and I think a couple were even Space (seem to recall a Packard Bell doing that).

You didn't mention your keyboard. If you're using USB keyboard, can you lay hands on a PS/2 keyboard to try? It's stupid, but I have encountered a couple of boards that didn't let me into BIOS setup when I hit the correct key on a USB keyboard, but worked fine when I used a PS/2. I have an old PS/2 keyboard with a bulit-in trackball for just those weirdo boards, which are luckily getting less common. I know it's seeing your TAB keypress, but it *may* work.

You should get some sort of wackiness (long beep, no video, other odd response) if your BIOS is truly fouled, I'd think. If your BIOS chip is in a removable module, maybe you could press on it **just** enough to make sure it's got a good connection? That's healed a couple of apparently-doomed boards for me, apparently the heating and cooling of the parts had worked 'em partly out of socket.