Computer Turning on, but no output

[Brother Manfredy]

Ok, a little backstory on a aproblem i had about a week ago Here, basically i thought my computer wasn't working because i thought i damaged the DIMM sockets. So i switched all my components to another motherboard and still had problems. It turned out that i was creating a short with the motherboard being in contact with the case or whatever, like Harvey said in that thread(thanks Harvey ).

I remounted the motherboard without some metal braces it came with and all was well i thought. Plugged in the essential components, turned it on, and it seemed like i finally had a working computer. But after awhile, my monitor still had no signal coming to it. This was the same problem my other motherboard when i figured i damaged the DIMM sockets, i guess i was wrong. It wasn't the sockets that were bad, it was the RAM itself i thought. So i bought a brand new gig of ram online, Crucial Value Select. I wanted a functioning computer over performance at the moment.

It arrived yesterday and i thought i could finally get it up and running that day. I had all the hardware hooked up and ready to go waiting for the RAM to come in. I installed the ram, but much to my dismay it didn't fix the problem of the monitor getting no signal.

I sat there for a moment wondering what my problem was, so i thoguht and came to the conclusion it may be my graphics card. I loaned my old one to a friend and got it back last night at work. When i got home i took out mine and put in the old one, didn't work.

I can only guess the problem is my hard drive, but i thought atleast BIOS would come up on the monitor if everything was workign right. My monitor isn't the problem i don't think because whenever i plug it into the graphics card, i hear it turn on and it comes up saying, "Off Mode in 5 Seconds" because the computer isn't on.

I am now going to move all the hardware back into my old case and motherboard, since i know those worked at one time with the same items in it, just would be changing the RAM.

Does anyone else have any ideas, or if moving everything back to my old motherboard is a bad idea?

 

[stevty2889]

Have you tried booting with the bare minimums? 1 stick of ram, cpu/heatsink and fan, video card? Unplug everything else, hard drivers, cd/dvd drives, any other PCI cards such as sound or network cards. It could be a problem with the standoffs again. There should be one under each mounting hole in the motherboard, and none anywhere else. Do you get any beeps when you turn it on?

 

[Brother Manfredy]

I haven't tried using the Bare minimums with the new RAM yet, i will go try that now. For the stand-offs, i have no extra ones under the motherboard, and used all cloth washers and stuff like that.

Will go try the bare minimum with the new RAM and report back soon

 

[Brother Manfredy]

Ok, tried bare minimums with both grpahics cards, still nothing =(

And there are no beeps from the motherboard either.

Could maybe the processor be the problem? I never struggled with it at any time, easy installation, the heatsink took my about 20 seconds to put on. Didn't snap it on first try, but on the second try no sweat.

 

[Aquila76]

This sounds more like a corrupted BIOS than anything else. Try unplugging the system, hit the power button to drain any power resident in the system, then reset the bios on the mobo (usually a jumper or contact points).

Also, what proc are you using? Is it supported by the shipping BIOS?

 

[Brother Manfredy]

Unplugged the computer, grounded myself, drained power, and reset CMOS. Turned on and nothing.

I guess i never really thought to see if the BIOS supported the processor, but kind of assumed it did because it was sold as a combo pack on outpost.com. The manual doesn't say anything about what processors the BIOS support, but the motherboard only accepts Athlon XP/Athlon and Duron processors, wouldn't make sense to add BIOS that doesn't support those, but i will try to look up the supported processors for the BIOS. Only information i get on the BIOS is that it uses Award BIOS.

 

[Brother Manfredy]

Originally posted by: stevty2889
Do you get any beeps when you turn it on?

Thinking more about this question, there is an open connector on the motherboard called Speaker1, but there are no jumpers for it, nor are there any jumpers in the packaging that came with the motherboard.

 

[TraumaRN]

What motherboard do you have?? I had a similar problem with my current rig, the first mobo Epox sent me had a bad PCI-E slot so the system booted up POSTed and went into BIOS of course I couldnt see that since my monitor wasnt getting a signal...maybe RMA the mobo??

 

[Brother Manfredy]

Originally posted by: DeathBUA
What motherboard do you have?? I had a similar problem with my current rig, the first mobo Epox sent me had a bad PCI-E slot so the system booted up POSTed and went into BIOS of course I couldnt see that since my monitor wasnt getting a signal...maybe RMA the mobo??

I have an ECS N2U400-A that i bought back in like May. Never took it out of it's packaging until a few weeks ago when this came up. I don't think it is one particular slot though. One of my graphics cards is AGP, the other is an older PCI slot one. Thanks for the suggestion though, i would probably followed the suggestion if i had 2 AGP cards.


I think i am just going to move everything back over to my old Motherboard where all the same hardware worked once ebfore, besides the new RAM i bought. Although thinking that that motherboard was useless, i left the Processor in and it has been left there for about 2 weeks now in the motherboard and case =/. Hopefully no damage could had been done to it. And if there was, i will put in the processor i got from the combo and currently using and try again. It is the same model, AMD Athlon 2500

 

[Aquila76]

Originally posted by: Brother Manfredy

Originally posted by: stevty2889
Do you get any beeps when you turn it on?

Thinking more about this question, there is an open connector on the motherboard called Speaker1, but there are no jumpers for it, nor are there any jumpers in the packaging that came with the motherboard.

That's there to connect to your case's speaker. If there isn't a little piezo speaker soldered on the mobo, which fewer and fewer have these days, you aren't going to hear the beeps. Connect something on there and see if you get beeps.

AMD Athlon 2500

You shouldn't need a BIOS update for that CPU. If you had an X2 or a Venice core A64 CPU, then you may run into trouble.

I have an ECS N2U400-A that i bought back in like May. Never took it out of it's packaging until a few weeks ago when this came up. I don't think it is one particular slot though. One of my graphics cards is AGP, the other is an older PCI slot one. Thanks for the suggestion though, i would probably followed the suggestion if i had 2 AGP cards.

Are you running both cards at the same time? Most BIOS default to the PCI slot first as the primary display if you are.

 

[grimdeath]

you ARE plugging your monitor into your correct videocard slot right? they normally have two connectors on a videocard these days and only one is considered the "main" and will put out your signal...i had this problem when i upgraded my computer a couple weeks ago, after about 5 minutes of troubleshooting i tried switching to the other port and boom, video

not a bad idea to just check..

 

[Brother Manfredy]

Originally posted by: Aquila76
That's there to connect to your case's speaker. If there isn't a little piezo speaker soldered on the mobo, which fewer and fewer have these days, you aren't going to hear the beeps. Connect something on there and see if you get beeps.

There's no little speaker that i see, and i don't see any jumpers wide enough to connect to them, and no obvious connectors coming from the PSU to connect to it. Will try to do some of the random looking connectors to see if they fit without forcing.

I had them plugged in one at a time, never both in at the same time.

Originally posted by: grimdeath
you ARE plugging your monitor into your correct videocard slot right? they normally have two connectors on a videocard these days and only one is considered the "main" and will put out your signal...i had this problem when i upgraded my computer a couple weeks ago, after about 5 minutes of troubleshooting i tried switching to the other port and boom, video

not a bad idea to just check..

They both have the normal blue plug-in(i'm assuming those are for CRT monitors) and one DVI port(assuming for LCD's), but thanks for the adivce, i am sure you saved another post from me eventually whenever i buy a new video card =P

 

[phantom404]

Make sure you have the heatsink seated correctly. I did this about a year and a half ago on my 3200+ xp. The heatsink has a groove(almost looks like a step) that is suppose to go towards the top of the cpu where the white plastic is that tells your socket #. I had mine on backwards and would not post worth a flip. Swapped it around and everything worked.

 

[Brother Manfredy]

Originally posted by: phantom404
Make sure you have the heatsink seated correctly. I did this about a year and a half ago on my 3200+ xp. The heatsink has a groove(almost looks like a step) that is suppose to go towards the top of the cpu where the white plastic is that tells your socket #. I had mine on backwards and would not post worth a flip. Swapped it around and everything worked.

I checked mine, all it had was an arrow. I assumed that the arrow was meant to go up, towards where the socket label is. I had it upside down, but that was how it worked for nearly 2 years though. When i got the computer from ibuypower, it had the heatsink(seemingly) the wrong way, and that is the way i just put it back on before reading your post. I changed a stick of RAM, video card, and PSU to the other motherboard, and changed the way the heatsink was layign, so the arrow was up but the same thing happened. I am starting to think that it may be the monitor somehow. Going to try and disconnect this one(family has the computer in a cubby hole in this desk, but all the cords are so tight that i can't move it out, and the cubby hole is too small to easily get my hand back there to disconnect this POS monitor.) We'll see though

 

[phantom404]

When you turn it on can you hear the hard drives turn on and does it sound like that it loads windows, you can also hear the floppy drive when it searches for something to boot off of if you have a floppy. If so then might be the monitor, if not might be cpu.

 

[Aquila76]

Originally posted by: Brother Manfredy

Originally posted by: Aquila76
That's there to connect to your case's speaker. If there isn't a little piezo speaker soldered on the mobo, which fewer and fewer have these days, you aren't going to hear the beeps. Connect something on there and see if you get beeps.

There's no little speaker that i see, and i don't see any jumpers wide enough to connect to them, and no obvious connectors coming from the PSU to connect to it. Will try to do some of the random looking connectors to see if they fit without forcing.

I had them plugged in one at a time, never both in at the same time.

Yeah, I had to remake my case speaker's plug to fit on my mobo as well. If you use a thumbtack or finishing nail, you can pry up the little plastic bits that keep the metal pieces in place and move them into proper place or just tape them up and plug them into the mobo directly.

 

[Brother Manfredy]

Originally posted by: phantom404
When you turn it on can you hear the hard drives turn on and does it sound like that it loads windows, you can also hear the floppy drive when it searches for something to boot off of if you have a floppy. If so then might be the monitor, if not might be cpu.

Well, it is not the monitor, since i switched my monitor to this computer(it is nice to see colors again... the reason the other monitor is a POS is because gamma is like 1/2'ed and no way to fix it.)

Looks like it is time to explore the possibility that the CPU is bad, but on both of them? It doesn't make sense. No floppy to listen to, but i do remember hard drive activity back when the original problem occured, haven't really been listening to it since.

Originally posted by: Aquila76

Yeah, I had to remake my case speaker's plug to fit on my mobo as well. If you use a thumbtack or finishing nail, you can pry up the little plastic bits that keep the metal pieces in place and move them into proper place or just tape them up and plug them into the mobo directly.

I will switch the heatsink back to the other mobo and hook up my old graphics card and see what happens. I have another stick of 512 ram to put in to see if it works. If both of the mobo's don't work when they each have a stick of ram video card, do you think i will be able to get this fixed?

 

[Brother Manfredy]

I would also like to thank stevty289, Aquila76, DeathBUA, Grimdeath, and Phantom404 for taking the time to think and write your help and suggestions

 

[phantom404]

This might sound strange but you might also try to unplug your led lights and stuff. I had a DFI lan party with my old Athlon XP and was having a similar problem. I unplugged all the power switch, power led, reset switch, hd led, and speakers. Everything turned on and worked fine(Was able to turn on becuase the DFI Lan Party board as an on board power button). I then plugged them back in one by one and found out teh reset button must of had a short in it because the problem came back when i plugged it in. You can also turn on the motherboard by taking a screwdriver and touching the two pins(at same time) on the motherboard where you would plug in the power button.

 

[Brother Manfredy]

Originally posted by: phantom404
This might sound strange but you might also try to unplug your led lights and stuff. I had a DFI lan party with my old Athlon XP and was having a similar problem. I unplugged all the power switch, power led, reset switch, hd led, and speakers. Everything turned on and worked fine(Was able to turn on becuase the DFI Lan Party board as an on board power button). I then plugged them back in one by one and found out teh reset button must of had a short in it because the problem came back when i plugged it in. You can also turn on the motherboard by taking a screwdriver and touching the two pins(at same time) on the motherboard where you would plug in the power button.

Alright, will try that. I haven't been plugging in the LED's and stuff, but i still had a couple connectors hooked up, i will unplug them all and jump the power switch with a screwdriver and try it

 

[Aquila76]

Originally posted by: Brother Manfredy

Originally posted by: phantom404
This might sound strange but you might also try to unplug your led lights and stuff. I had a DFI lan party with my old Athlon XP and was having a similar problem. I unplugged all the power switch, power led, reset switch, hd led, and speakers. Everything turned on and worked fine(Was able to turn on becuase the DFI Lan Party board as an on board power button). I then plugged them back in one by one and found out teh reset button must of had a short in it because the problem came back when i plugged it in. You can also turn on the motherboard by taking a screwdriver and touching the two pins(at same time) on the motherboard where you would plug in the power button.

Alright, will try that. I haven't been plugging in the LED's and stuff, but i still had a couple connectors hooked up, i will unplug them all and jump the power switch with a screwdriver and try it

It would be awfully funny if it was just the reset switch connected backwards...

 

[Brother Manfredy]

Thanks for all the help guys, but it wasn't anything that has to do with the front panel, i jumped it with a screwdriver and still no dice.

I think i will probably end up buying a barebones system from mwave or something in the next few weeks.

Don't want to quit on it, but i guess it is time to think about completely different options, because i have *NO* idea what possibly could be wrong

 

[phantom404]

Does the motherboard have onboard video...if so try to disable it..Only thing left I can think of man, sorry.

 

[Aquila76]

Sorry You've had such a time with this. Sounds like the new board came in DOA if it's still not working after all this.

 

[Brother Manfredy]

Originally posted by: phantom404
Does the motherboard have onboard video...if so try to disable it..Only thing left I can think of man, sorry.

Originally posted by: Aquila76
Sorry You've had such a time with this. Sounds like the new board came in DOA if it's still not working after all this.

Alright guys, thanks a lot for all your help. I am probably just going to buy a barebones computer from mwave(because they test everything before they ship, on barebones atleast). Never thought i would have the problem of being shipped a DOA product, just didn't think it was common enough.

Just to make sure about a question i have in the back of my mind, will i have any major diificulties connecting my old and running harddrive to a new computer(especially if i go from a regular 32-bit Athlon to a AMD 64-bit 3000+ venice?)and have any errors? Don't feel like buying another windows XP cd since i reformatted before with this key, so it has been activated twice. Not sure how many more it will go.

Again, thanks for all your help.