PC rebuild with built in problems

So yeah... I'm sitting at home, using my computer, and all of a sudden like the video washes off to the side.. yeah, lemmie explain. All the colors got washed to the right about an inch, it was really strange. (This was on my GF2 MX200) So i'm thinking to myself that the video card is probably dying. I needed a new one anyway, so i went on to newegg and picked up a GF FX5200 from Gainward. I also orded 512mb of corsair valueram so i can finally take out my old Asus A7A266 and replace it with the Dragon Plus! kt266 (gotta have that exclimation mark!) I had been using sdram since.

Alright. So i replace all the parts and rebuild the entire computer basically. Everything comes together, i plug in the power. I push the button, fans, hard drives and everthing else that should spin spun. One problem... no video. No LED lights.. i'll put up full system specs next period.

any beeps at all?
Think its actually posting and just no video?

If so maybe try reseating the vid card

No LED lights sounds weird tho

no video. No LED lights

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No LED lights:
Could be that you just connected the wires from the LED's to the motherboard incorrectly. It's a common mistake, as it's frequently poorly documented in the motherboard manual. Try just turning the plug from the case the other way.

no video:
How old is your monitor? Could be that you didnt have a video card problem at all in the first place, maybe your monitor is dying. Can you try to use another monitor?

Do you get any beep codes? You should hear (probably) one short beep if it passes POST, or some other series of beeps if it doesn't. Or, maybe the case speaker is hooked up incorrectly too?

gahdzila said:

No LED lights:
Could be that you just connected the wires from the LED's to the motherboard incorrectly. It's a common mistake, as it's frequently poorly documented in the motherboard manual. Try just turning the plug from the case the other way.

Click to expand...

yeah those thinigs are a pain in the *** sometimes

gahdzila said:

Could be that you didnt have a video card problem at all in the first place, maybe your monitor is dying.

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The way he discribed it, it deff sounds like the monitor, ive seen spots of monitors turn all purple, fade out, dosent sound much diffrent

like gahdzilla said, try a diff monitor or that one on a diff comp
also when ur trying to get it to post only have the important things installed, IE. only one stick of ram, vid card,, dont need the sound card, nic card and everything in there at once
makes it easyer to narrow down the problem sometimes

do u have another comp u can test the parts in? like the CPU, ram, vid card

first i would check the beep codes tho

OK. Monitor is fine. Video card is fine. Got no beep codes.. none, just silence. I have a feeling that the motherboard is good.. but I could be wrong. Chances are I have a dead cpu on my hands.. I'm going to lug my pc over to someone's house and pop in a cpu to check, but i'm fairly certain that its a dead cpu.. Shame, but its not that bad. A T-bird 1.0 is certainly getting old.

No beeps, sounds like CPU or ram

btw: get the led lights working?

I'd be more likely to think the motherboard is dead if you arent getting any beeps at all.

If the mobo is good, it should give beep codes for a bad CPU or RAM.

But definately worth checking if you've got another working CPU you can try in your board.

I dont want it to be mobo, but it could be. After looking over the mobo manual there were no beep codes for bad cpu, i'm fairly sure that the mobo cant do much of anything aside from providing power straight to components. So if its a bad cpu then no led's would make sense, as well as no beep codes.
Correct me if i'm wrong though.

That sounds like a problem my friend just had with his computer. He was getting bad temps and underclocking his p4 3.06 to 2.3... (I know really sucks). So anyways he wanted help installing the Volcano 7+ he bought. We get it in everything looks perfect, boot up the CPU go into bios and make sure everythings in order. Then we clock it back up to 3.06 and watch the temps in bios to make sure we're not frying anything. So then we save/exit bios the computer screen goes black like normal, but then stays black, fans running and everything, but the computer never beeped. So we turned it off and tried again, same thing, turns on fans running etc (furthermore the monitor was getting no signal) it just stayed in power save mode. we thought it was the video card, but switched his Radeon 9800 out and put in my gf4200 and same thing. then we pop out the battery to reset bios, start up and same thing again... So basically after another 30 minutes of frustration we give up. 2 hours later we come back and start it up. It BEEPS! we get into bios and clock it back down to 2.3 as fast as possible, save/exit bios, compter restarts and beeps again and then it goes into windows fine. At this point I'm baffled as to what changed that allowed us to get into bios, but then I start to think, theres the linear frequency control between ram/cpu clock, and when he clocked his cpu back to 3.06 (133x23) it put his ram at 400Mhz clock (which might be too high to run with stock voltage). So we restart the computer praying that it will work agian and it does, and before we clock the cpu up, we put the Ram at the next lowest setting down, and then clock the cpu up to 3.06 again, this time the Ram is at 354Mhz instead of 400Mhz. We start up his computer and it works fine, and has been working fine for the last 2 days since it happened.

ok so sorry for the long post its only going to get longer lol... and since I don't know your cpu settings or what your Ram is rated at etc I dont' even know if this will help lol, but hopefully it does. Don't know if you have tried this yet, but especially since you have new Ram...see if your old ram still works, if not then clear bios and see if the old ram works then, then you could try taking out the old and putting in the new ram (probably wouldn't work if old didn't work but worth a shot I guess), and if you can get into bios, try clocking your ram down and see if you can get into windows then. If so try increasing the voltage to your ram and then slowly clocking it up.

Maybe when

all of a sudden like the video washes off to the side.. yeah, lemmie explain. All the colors got washed to the right about an inch, it was really strange.

Click to expand...

when that happened maybe it was the AGP slot that failed/melted/fried whatever you want to call it, and in that case it could be your mobo that needs fixin/replacing. Guess its just really hard to tell not knowing system specs but since you said you wanted a new mobo anyways...

ok so one last thing, what OS are you using? Most newer 3d cards don't cause problems with installation, but I guess I'm just thinking back to windows '95 and installing my voodoo2 where I had to run an install program for the card before opening my case and sticking it in. Don't know anything about the new GF FX series, but if they come with install instructions, maybe theres some troubleshooting section in there about this sorta problem.

It still sounds like a monitor problem to me (in the original configuration). Try a degauss there.

In the current configuration, it sounds more serious.

1) Are there any jumpers on the mobo? If so, double-check them.

2) Also, are you powering your fan from the mobo or from a molex? Some mobos have a built-in protection to prevent you from booting up if they don't detect an RPM signal on the CPU fan header. (But there will be a bypass for that.)

3) Double-check and reseat all components, particularly the CPU, memory, ATX power connectors, and video card. Don't bother connecting anything other than the CPU, 1 stick of memory (try various slots and all sticks if you need to), and vid card. Don't worry about the drives or anything else for the time being. Of course, connect your HSF.

4) As was mentioned before, double-check all connections between your case and the mobo. These are very often poorly-documented, and if you aren't closing the proper connection, the PSU and mobo won't even get a power-on signal.

5) One question -- do any fans spin up when you hit the power?

6) Which BIOS are you using? Award, I assume? If so, there should be beep codes for the CPU. (The motherboard will try to post on its own; CPU detection comes slightly later in the process, so there should be some activity, even if the CPU is fried.)

7) Double-check the mobo mounting. Make sure that nothing is shorting.

Just a few things to try. Good luck! -- Paul

thanks for the heap of information, and i admit I haven't given you all the info you need to make a diagnosis. Heregoes:

T-bird 1.0 @stock (for now)
SK-7 w/ 7volt Tornado (modded by reducing +12 to +7 with diode resistors. The rpm meter still functions properly)
Soyo Dragon Plus! (KT266 based) [cpu is set entirely by software]
512MB Corsair ValueRam
1 20gb Maxtor
2 40gb maxtors (currently not installed, will be raided once its working)
Enermax 300w ps
Gainward GF FX5200

When Power is plugged into power supply:
Mobo led lights up to show that it has power and the onboard lan plug lights up orange.

When I push the power button:
Fans and HDD's spin, the hdd activity lite on the underside of the hdd lights up for about a seccond then turns off. After holding down the power button for 5 or so secconds it turns off. No lights on the front of the pc function. No beep codes at all. I am sure that I correctly connected the wires.

Everything is adequately cooled, but in swapping the cpu i could have shorted it.. i did use the strap thing, but it could have happened.


Color washing thing has been addressed. The problem lies with my 2+ y/o GF2MX200. I took out the video card and placed it into my other computer. Color washing again occured. This problem was solved by placing another fan blowing on the backside of the card, but i'm not using it now anyway. The monitor is fine. nothing wrong with it.

OK! I've got the pc back up and running, but I've still got an issue that i don't quite understand.

Firstly, for some reason my GF FX won't boot properly in my Asus A7A266 (I had to transfer back to the old M/B) I get the beep code for incorrectly mounted AGP card and it doesn't boot. It could be that the tech on that card is far newer and there is some kind of incompatibility.

I'm going to RMA the Dragon, its still under warranty, so its no big deal. I dont know what's wrong with it, but it definitely is the motherboard to blame.

Thanks for all your help people!

Hm... I was looking at my PM's, looking for the one about the purchase of the dragon, and to my surprise when i opened up the PM it was from pctuner@amd... apparently he's got a streak of bad sales, so I guess this is another to add to the list. I want to get in contact with him so as to see if I can get the recipt from the purchase so I dont have to pay some silly fee. If admin's have his contact info, I sure would appreciate some help with getting in touch with 'im. Its a great board.. its just broken.