MSI K7N420 Problem! Help Me!

[Yvo]

Hey,

I got a little situation. I got a brand new MSI K7N420 (Nforce board) today and well I am having a major issue. This system is for my parents who greatly need a new computer (Pentium 200 MMX).

So I got them a cheapo system for under $450. Uses all the onboard options (NIC, Video, Sound) and powered by a Duron 1.1 GHz.

So everything is in place. So I put in the power supply and it turns on.

3 seconds later... it just turns off. Now this happends every single time. The power supply I got worked great on a different box, so it can't be that.

I tried to see if I plugged in the cpu fan in the wrong connectors as some motherboards have safety features in them if they don't detect a fan RPM. Well that wasn't the case.

So anyone, what could be the case.

Here are the system specs:

MSI K7N420
AMD Duron 1.1 GHz
256MB Crucial PC2100 DDR-RAM
250W power supply
On board sound, NIC, video

 

[AGodspeed]

250W power supply

What company makes this power supply and was it your P2 200 machine that was "working perfectly fine" with this power supply? I'm guessing it's the power supply.

Btw, where did you buy that 1.1GHz Duron? You could probably get an Athlon XP 1600+ (1.4GHz) for the price of that Duron.

 

[Yvo]

It is a brand new power supply by A-Case Industries.

Powersupply worked fine in an ASUS A7V/ Tbird 800 @ 900MHz system

I'll try it with a other supply later tonight.

In the meantime any other solutions?

Yvo

 

[trikster2]

<< Btw, where did you buy that 1.1GHz Duron? You could probably get an Athlon XP 1600+ (1.4GHz) for the price of that Duron. >>




Agodspeed WHERE DO YOU SHOP?????????

Only $70 for the Duron 1.1 on price watch if you know where I can buy an XP 1600 for that price please let me know

Best price/performance right now in AMD's line has got to be the 1.0 Ghz Duron. Only $47 OEM at newegg.

 

[Gstanfor]

Imortant edit!!! make certain that the CMOS reset jumper is on the bottom two pins. The manual is wrong!

I'm also tipping it to be an inadequate power supply.

Do you have an adequate heat-sink on the cpu? are you certain it is making proper contact with the die?

Have you made sure that the board is correctly mounted in the case with no standoffs where they should not be?

Does the board start to post before shutting off?

Is the memory high quality and known to work in another system?

Have you tried removing everything but cpu and memory and test booting like that?

Greg

 

[Yvo]

I'm also tipping it to be an inadequate power supply.
I guess I am going to have to try a different power supply :-(!

Do you have an adequate heat-sink on the cpu? are you certain it is making proper contact with the die?
It is recommended to go up to 1.33 Athlon Tbird

Have you made sure that the board is correctly mounted in the case with no standoffs where they should not be?
Yes, that is correct... no stand offs in places they shouldn't be

Does the board start to post before shutting off?
Nope, VGA doesn't even start

Is the memory high quality and known to work in another system?
Yes, works fine in a different DDR system

Have you tried removing everything but cpu and memory and test booting like that?
Thats what I am doing right now, and nope :-(

 

[Yvo]

Well I tried a lot of things the past 2 hours.

I tried 3 different power supplies... an Enligh 300W, Generic 350W and then to finish a 430W Enermax power supply
System still does the same thing. Everything turns on, you here the hard drive startup and bam shut down. (MSI diagnostic leds says on the last moment that it happends during early chipset initiliazation, it goes on to VGA intiliazation, but right before everything goes off it returns back to early chipset initiliazation)

I tried other things such as:
A different CPU fan
Two different CPUs (Tbird 800 and XP 1900)
A different case (Enligh 7237)
A PCI video card, due to the fact that it returned to early chipset after the VGA step on the diagnostic.
A different keyboard (hey you never know!)
Three different different brands of DDR

Thats about all I did for now, I am incredibly curious of my motherboard is bad. Due to the fact that it is starting up, but just shuts down.

MSI has been notified and of course I have not yet received a reply, and wont expect a reply for atleast two weeks.

Any suggestions at all??? I have no clue what could be doing this!

Yvo

 

[Gstanfor]

Have you tried the Duron in another motherboard to be certain it works?

If you bought the board locally, they should exchange it without you having to RMA it.

Greg

 

[Yvo]

Unfortunately I didn't buy the board locally.

I am suspecting that it is a bad board also. Now I'll try again tomorrow, just in case if I missed something, but it definitely looks like a bad board.

Maybe I'll pay the price premium of an A7N from ASUS

Yvo

 

[Gstanfor]

what does the D-LED indicate?

Greg

 

[Yvo]

SUCCESS!!!!!!!!!

After 24 hours of trying to figure out what the hell is going on, I fixed it. Apparently something was funky in the new case. I installed it a trusty old Enlight 7237 (cheap & durable, 4 years old this month ) and success after the first time. I was astonished to say the least!

Windows 2000 installed and I installed the nforce drivers off of the CD. Then I found updated ones on the web and hell started. It restarted in the middle of the installation and it blue screened on boot. When in safe mode it would blue screen the moment you tried to run the install program. Very weird to say the least. Now since I had nothing installed yet, I just cleaned installed it again and did not update the drivers this time. Works like a charm now.

Updated the bios to 2.1 released by MSI. Now I have noticed two quirks. One is that the onboard video will NOT boot up at certain times. The monitor would just stay in standby and you didn't hear the little "beep". This just happened pure out of random. If you turn off the machine and let it rest for a few the video boots up again, but its annoying to say the least. Maybe a bios update will fix this.

Another is that there is no possible way to hook up a power led to this motherboard. Now I'll try to figure out if a mod is possible since its such a mess in that corner were all the case connecters are (a lot of silk screening like they had it set up a different way before). I checked close up pictures on review sites and it looked like on my board it is put on differently. Its no big deal, as the optical will show if the computer is on or not, but worth mentioning.

Well those are my experiences for now.

Yvo

 

[Gstanfor]

You connect the led to JFP2, pins 2 & 4 (S P LED). The manual is dreadful in this respect.

Why do so many mainboard companies have such crappy case connector layouts. One thing I will say about my old Super-7 Epox MVP3 G2 - it had an excellent case connector layout.

Greg