P5K Vanilla NO POST problems

[Marktime]

OK maybe someone out there can help me. My new system has a P5K Vanilla no frills board. One of the reasons I choose it was to be able to use its overclocking functions in BIOS. Sadly I can not get into BIOS, or even see the POST screen when I boot unless I use the VGA option on my LCD monitors. Simply I use a DVI D to VGA and a vga cable to my monitor. Then everything is fine but I am back to VGA which seems stupid when my vid card and monitors are digital DVI plugs. It will boot up just black screen till like 30 or 40 seconds later when it boots direct to the welcome XP screen. Can not enter BIOS either... BTW is not 30 or 40 seconds a long time for a quad 6600 to boot?

Basically I troubleshot by using first a different cable, then a different monitor, then even another 2600 chipset from ATi and still nothing. Always having to go back to the frustation of changing cables and plugs. Later I even swapped motherboards with no luck.

I know now it is not a BIOS update issue as last week I ran an N Vidia graphics card on there and it posted fine with the DVI cable... What in the world is happening here as I was under the impression that P5K was to work crossfire and that is only a function of ATi cards. I cant even get it to POST with a single card much less two!

Does anyone have a similar experience and know of a way I can use DVI cables on my LCD monitors and not have to switch cables evertime I want to see the POST or enter BIOS? This should be a time of excitement to have my new quad core and I cant wait to install the other system on my PC but would like to troubleshoot this before I waste all the time loading multiple OS's on this PC. I almost feel the best is to pack this up and send it back and buy a Gigabyte board. At this rate I will not be buying ASUS again as they seem to show little interest in the customer service and have a snail slow website.

Any suggestions appreciated...

Some have suggested that it was a driver issue but at POST no driver is laoded yet so this can not be the issue

 

[mcveigh]

welcome!
that is a weird problem. Have tried clearing the CMOS?

you've done this with different P5k mobo's?
different video cards, cables and monitors?
but it works with nvidia cards?

You have the latest bios installed?

wish I could be more help

 

[a20tornado]

Yea, I got a P5N-E board at the beginning of the year and I'm in an ongoing process to get through some similar issues. The first I got, I couldn't get to post at all so RMA'd it with the retailer. Got a second and it worked for a few weeks then did the same thing randomly, still waiting on the replacement from Asus for that one.

Since yours will work on and off, I'm guessing you're not having the same problem I had initially, but I'll mention it just in case. The new case I bought when I got the board had a grounding post that was essentially just a nub to hold the board in place, rather than a typical one you screw the motherboard onto. The P5N-E board wouldn't post in that case, but worked fine when I switched to an older case. Figured out (after several hours of swapping parts everywhere) that the board absolutely required a screw to go through that point to ground it. That's when I got it to work for a few weeks before it messed up again.

Now an older computer of mine is having similar issues, but much more randomly than the Asus board. I'm googling around now to try to figure out what to do about it. Clearing the CMOS/possibly replacing the CMOS battery seems to be the most common answers for it. The only other common answer I see is it being a power supply problem.

 

[mcveigh]

my thought before even finishing your post was power. it could be the poweer supply or it could also be the power coming into the power supply. make sure it's on a decent UPS

 

[AC5687]

Hello,

I had similar problems with my P5K: no post but computer boots up after a while, but after a couple of days, nothing would work at all.

I clear the bios, tested everything on another system, tried the board with other RAM / PSU / video card : still no boot - nothing.

I've read forums describing the same problem and one user pointed out that trying DDR2 667 and clearing the cmos seems to work - wich it did for me - at least in part. The computer boots but still no p.o.s.t. I wonder how long this will last - i'm afraid if I turn off the computer it won't restart anymore!

This is my second and LAST Asus board - this P5K was an exhange for my first and very quirky P5KC (wich is worse). Seems native DDR2-1066 support was just wishful thinking when Asus wrote the manual.

:roll:

 

[postmortemIA]

I had nothing but problems with ATi cards and POST-ing, starting with 9700 Pro and AGP 8x.

 

[imported_Champ]

I've had 2 P5Ks so far and I had a similar problem, I RMAed my first one, giving up after 2 days of trying and my second one has never had a problem, it is indistructable...literally...indestructable

Seems native DDR2-1066 support was just wishful thinking when Asus wrote the manual.

That has been the only bad thing about this board (besides my first RMA) no matter what I do with my PC2-8500's it will not run above 900mhz

EDIT:

I actually had a similar problem...when I changed cases my comp would do the same thing, it ended up that the cases USB wires were backwards so after I filped them it was able to boot.