Fixed! K7S5a ECS bios freezes during boot

[Nyconx]

Thanks for everyones help it is now fixed

Building a new computer, system first froze after getting to the windows is now instaling screen(after booting from cd). Now it only starts and the system either freezes after checking the ram or soon after. It seems to shut the keyboard down too. Since it freezes so early I cannot get into the bios to edit it at all.

Things I have tried

-Three different sticks of memory (all pulled from working computers)
-resetting the cmos
-Three different keyboards usb and ps/2
-Three different video cards (all pulled from working computers)

Anyone have any clue? The bios seems to be only a few months old.
Here are the system specs

K7S5a motherboard
1900+ athlon
400 Watt PS
WD 80 gig 8mb cach
various ram (sdram)
various video cards (pci and agp)

 

[tennesota]

What is the version number on your mobo?

 

[Peter]

You jumpered the WD drive _correctly_? This is a very frequently made mistake - the WD drives use three different jumper settings for Single, Master w/ slave present, and Slave. And of course you should check that you used the IDE cable the right way round. Blue connector goes on the mainboard, Black on the Master/Single drive, grey on the Slave.

 

[Jrouss]

If those other suggestions don't work I would try a different power supply.

 

[DieHardware]

When you cleared CMOS did you have the powersupply turned off or unplugged? Some boards won't clear otherwise.

 

[Nyconx]

when i cleared the cmos i had the ps off and unplugged.
I checked the cables they are all correct. (not the first system I built. The jumper setting is set to master (no jumper) on the hard drive.

The board is a version 3.1
unfortunetly i cant do anything with the bios because it freezes before that.
I still need to check the PS to make sure its not that. Though Im not sure it would be that because I was able to get further into this before.

 

[DieHardware]

Does it boot with only a floppy drive connected? Any beeps or error codes? Have you taken out all add-in cards? Did you try it with the Crucial DDR out of your Epox system?

 

[Nyconx]

The system does not boot with only the floppy connected. Only the single beep when you turn it on. I just tried it with the ddr stick from my epox system and it still doesnt boot. It either freezes at the point when it checks for ram or right after the ram check is ok and the press del to bios pops up (witch if i hit del right away over and over will show go by it but still freezes.


The only card I have in the system is the video card (no onboard)

I just tried a new power supply and it still freezes in the same spots. I did get it to go to the point where it starts to check for primary and slaves but then it froze but that only happened once.

 

[Nyconx]

Does anyone think it is just a bad mobo? Should I rma it?

 

[Peter]

OK, so you got random freezes after a few seconds ... check the CPU cooling solution and the mounting thereof.

 

[Nyconx]

Peter you are awesome. Here is what happended put heatsink on backwards which meant only half of the cpu was on it (could tell by the silver mark now it works! all that for a backwards heatsink.

Thanks everyone.