[HotSnoJ]

A friend and I have built a new computer and we just spent 2.5 hours pluging and unpluging wires to see what was the matter since it wouldn't start. Then My friend said something about the screws that hold the motherboard in place. I had put the insulatoring washers on the bottom of the motherboard instead of on top. So we took the motherboard out and redid the screws and now the computer doesn't even startup! The only thing that even does anything is the LED light that tells you when the computer is on. It flashes for a split second then goes off.

BTW here are the specs http://hotsnoj.www2.dotnetplayground.com/misc_files/computer-parts.html
It does include a nVidia Gforce3 card which I bought month before.


Please help.

[an0n]

Take everything out and start again.

[FreeTerran]

I think you have not enough POWER you need a power supply over 300 W.
Min 350 W.

But i'm me not secure.

[Admiral LSD]

Does the motherboard have any kind of CPU overheat protection and are all the fans plugged into the right headers, especially the CPU fan?

[Odyssey]

Unplug everything, take the cpu out, everything. Leave only the motherboard with the case attachments fitted - i.e. power supply connector, internal speaker, power switch, power LED, etc...
Then try switching it on. Will it beep? If it's an AMIBIOS, it should give one long continuous beep, which in this case would be interpreted as 'No CPU'. If you don't get a beep after a little while, check all the connections you've got in, especially the power cables and internal speaker.
If all that fails, you've probably killed your motherboard. If however you do get the beep, then Free Terran is right, you probably need a higher-rated power supply. This is relatively inexpensive.

[Stealth]

sounds a lot like the motherboard, especially that flashing LED light for a second.

have you checked all the jumper settings on the motherboard?  cause that's quite often the problem.

do you have a digital camera?

[an0n]

Originally posted by an0n
Take everything out and start again.

[IceFire]

You should only need a 300W power supply.  You don't seem to have anything that really needs the extra juice at this point although I'd definately make sure you don't power on those extra things like lights and stuff till you've got the system working and stable.

I'm going to be going through with this kind of thing in the next few months myself.  Good luck to you and to me

[silverwolf]

heres my experience with power supplies: if it doesn't start up the first time like you said turn it off then turn it back on. it should start because half or all the stuff is halfway powered up from the first time. if that doesn't work maybe its a crappy powersupply

[Stealth]

power supply or motherboard, that's my bet

[Razor]

Perhaps you killed one of your components with static el. Try isolating yourself or freeing se from your body and clothing. The best way to do is to touch and hold a metal object for few seconds which is grounded/earthed. That should help. Consult the user manual before starting any hardware instalaton.

[Petrarch of the VBB]

surely he'd have felt a discharge of static, though?

[Turnsky]

here's something i did once, put the IDE cable in upside-down... computer didn't even make it past the post....

[Visionism]

No you wouldnt necessarily feel static discharge. Only a very small charge is needed to fry some components. Make sure incidentally that your CMOS jumper is in the keep position and not the clear position. That could easily result in the problems your having, in fact I had that problem myself once due to a misprint in a mobo manual (Damn you MSI...)

Oh and how the hell do you put in an IDE connector upside down? With a hammer?

[IceFire]

Originally posted by Visionism
Oh and how the hell do you put in an IDE connector upside down? With a hammer?

Old IDE connectors were not slotted so it was very easy to put them in upside down...especially if you forgot which side the red stripe was on....or...there was no stripe even on the bloody cable.  I've experienced the same thing myself...nowadays its rediculously easy to install IDE...and new Serial ATA just takes the frusteration and fun right out of hard drive and CD drive installations

[Turnsky]

and in a dark case, sometimes, pin 1 was on the other side, of the drive....

[J.F.K.]

Originally posted by IceFire
I've experienced the same thing myself...nowadays its rediculously easy to install IDE...and new Serial ATA just takes the frusteration and fun right out of hard drive and CD drive installations

No kidding, there's simply no more entertainment in watching people installing hard drives anymore. Crying shame.

[kasperl]

one time, i had some fromatting and partitioning problems to go with a bad secondary IDE controller. after a partitioning or five, each with a couple of formats, i forgot to format before i ran windows install, i just couldn't figure out why scandisk found all those files......

[kode]

Originally posted by J.F.K.


No kidding, there's simply no more entertainment in watching people installing hard drives anymore. Crying shame.

except when the cables comes loose when you withdraw your hand after plugging them in. I wasted a weekend that way...

[HotSnoJ]

Ok some news.

My friend was over again today and after a while we took the mother board out of the case and put it on the anti-static pad that came with it. We then put the all the absolutely necessary parts on the motherboard. And it workd like a charm! We then put the thing back in the case and it didn't work! Well we were by that time getting very mad so we decided to take a break. After that break we got back to work. We took the motherboard out again and put all the absolutely necessary parts on the motherboard. This time it didn't work. So we fiddled aroung with various cables that might not be set right. My friend then had a brian storm. It might be the ON/OFF switch cable that maybe the problem because since the power must go between the motherboard to turn on the power supply fan then it has got to be that cable or some circuit around it. He thought this because when we pulled out the switch cable we had to pull on the wires so we we're in effect pulling the wires out of the plug! This time we dicided we should just test the all the parts outside of the case before we put the mb back in. So we attached the harddrive and the CD-RW drive to install WinXP. So we booted from the CD and when we got to a the stage where you so some decideing on which partition to install on or something like that it said it could write on the harddrive (or "fixed disk") so we restated and this time we formated the HDD again and we got the same error when installing XP. We also got something like "could not access fixed disk" when trying to use fdisk. So we concluded that the harddrive is shot.

Perhaps you killed one of your components with static el.

I didn't, or really hope I didn't. I have an anti-static wristband.

Make sure incidentally that your CMOS jumper is in the keep position and not the clear position. That could easily result in the problems your having, in fact I had that problem myself once due to a misprint in a mobo manual (Damn you MSI...)

I'm guessing this is one of the jumpers I switched while trying to get it to work. But I have switched it back and when I did the computer did start.