Oh shiiiiiiiz

Crizap...
Im building my friend a computer, no prob. Ive built about 9 computers in the last few years so this isnt like my first experimental computer. I build it, works fine, everything, perfect, except hard drive loads as primary slave, ok, shut off comp, switch cable location, boot back up. Floppy drive doesnt work now, pretty much NO MATTER WHAT. Ive swapped drives, cables, you name it, it even can access the drive, but it says FDC failure or Error with drive a:.
Im trying to find the problem in the BIOS, I change something, restart, display doesnt come up. Swap video cards, pull out every device one by one, retry a billion times. Everything is out but video card and CPU and it wont come up. Ive tried pushing delete to get to the BIOS and blindly set it to default settings, no such luck. Im scrizewed! can someone help me? (AGP card, Gigabyte GA-7VRXP, XP 1800+, (it has dual bios... I thought about swapping the two BIOS chips but im not that brave/stupid)).
The problem is that the video remains at the no signal state. The HDD light stays solid for about a minute and the cd drives blink on and off for the same ammount of time, then they all stop (just describing the symptoms).

try it with another PSU.

here is an old secret trick I learned... don’t laugh it works, i first learned this on about 4 years ago. (and actually had to do it on my Bd7-II to get my floppy to work.

Take the floppy end of the floppy cable and cut of the marker tab (with some diagonals, or maybe a chisel) then plug the floppy into the cable reverse. Works like a charm with some mobo / configurations!

gofastman beat me to it, but I had the same problem 2 pc's ago and this worked for me. I used a toe-nail clipper to cut the marker tab off

Floppy aint the problem, the problem is that I get no video display when I turn it on. Ill keep that floppy trick in mind for next time tho!

bumpity bump bump

Clear your CMOS. Open up your mobo manual and find the jumper to clear the CMOS. It's usually a 3 pin setup with a jumper on 2 of the pins. You usually switch the jumper from pins 1-2 to pins 2-3, for example.

Do the following:

1 - Power off the system and unplug the power cord from the PS
2 - Remove the battery from the motherboard
3 - Switch the Clear CMOS Jumper over (according to your manual) for about 5 second.
4 - Switch the jumper back
5 - Put the battery back in
6 - Plug in the power cord and power the system back up.

Hopefully that will get you back to the point where you can troubleshoot your cable/drives issue.

Thanks for idea, didnt work though =( I think Im out of $100

find another psu that you could try with that system, but first make sure that the video card actually works.
if you have more than one memory stick try it only with one.

also, make sure that cpu is properly sat.

It worked before, and I have tried re-seating the RAM, but the computer wont boot up without the CPU, so I didnt bother trying that =(

Odd thougth, but have you considered that either the CPU is DOA or that the Mobo is hosed? When I first went for my most recent upgrade, I got it all put together and it died within the first 24 hours. No bios beeps, no nothing. Fans would spin up, you could hear the harddrive spin up and would get a light. But no video signal. I tried three different video cards on the board, reduced it to minimum components, nothing. Even tried to promp a bios beep by removing the vid card. Nothing.

If you pull the vid card (and it doesn't have onboard graphics) you should get a no video error beep during the post to bios. If you don't then something is hosed and I would either return it to the place of original purchase for an exchange of both parts (let them worry about the RMA) or if you bought them from different places then I would consider RMAing the two parts to the manufacturers.