Help for a friend

[PJ'l_Master]

as posted from SHOforum.com

Ok, here we go.

Bought an MSI KT4V motherboard with an Athlon XP2200 processor already on the board. It was used, but the seller was very reputable and friendly. I also bought a Radeon 9600XT video card used but once again, the seller seemed reputable. New items for this upgrade included Kingston PC 333 512 MB RAM and an Artic Cooling heatsink. This was all going into my existing case that also has a DVD & CD drive, floppy drive, 30GB hard drive and a 300W power supply. I'm also using the cords & wires that were in the case; they look the same as the wires that came with the new board so I'm guessing this is ok. I was previously running an older ASUS board with an Athlon XP1800 and an Nvidia Ge force 2 400MX video card.

I've installed RAM, CD drives & cards before but I've never done a full on upgrade like this. But I've had several people tell me it's no biggie if you have some computer knowledge, just follow the directions. Which I did to the letter. Took my time, checked everything out, installed all the cards then went for the first boot.

Nothing. The fans power up and the lights on the front panel and CD/DVD drives light up, but I don't hear any sort of booting going on, and my monitor doesn't register anything coming from the PC...it's like the monitor isn't even plugged in.



My first thought was a bad processor, so I installed the old Athlon XP processor I had, and I got the same result, and it was working flawlessly before this upgrade.

All the work was done in the kitchen, on hard floors and I was very mindful of static electricity and constantly kept myself grounded. I was also extremely carefull while handling the electronics. When installing the heat sink I used the included compound per the directions, I've triple checked everything and I believe everything is installed correctly. After the first attempt I removed the other cards so at startup the only card installed is the video card.

At this point I'm completely lost. I guess I can't be sure if it's booting to BIOS since my monitor doesn't register anything coming from the PC. I'm in over my head here...for all I know there is a little jumper somewhere that's a problem. Or maybe the motherboard is toast?

let me know what you guys think so i can get back to them ASAP

[OUTLAWS Tip]

My first thought is the power supply can't handle it all your new hardware upgrades. I would try using the old video card and hopefully at least boot to bios.

If you can boot to bios then set it to boot off of the cd-first and do a repair install of xp.

Pick up a good power supply and stick your nice video card back in.
:hmmm: :dunno: ;)

[JIMINATOR]

0: make sure the agp card is pressed all the way in the back

ground zero. pull the board out of the case, place it on the plastic bag it came in, plug in the video card, cpu, memory and power connectors. this is safe btw. you don't need to plug in the case connectors, just short the two pins that go to the on/off switch to make the system (try to) turn on. once you have that, make it boot. vary the cpu, memory, MB in different combinations until you have something that will boot. once you do, you then check the standoffs to the screw holes in the board to ensure that there are no extras.... then proceed with the install...

[ME BIGGD01]

ok so the system is turning on but it's not booting.....

suggestion for future reference---
before installing any motherboard, you should bench test it to make sure it works. use the motherboard box as a place holder and insert just the video card and keyboard along with the ram and cpu. use a flat head screw driver to hit the jumpers to power the board up.


ok lets see...
are you hearing and sort of beeps? lets reset the bios jumper---(hey did you make sure the bios jumper was not on wrong? this could cause this problem you are having so try looking at the jumper and seeing if it's on reset instead of the correct jumper).

let's see if we can get the bios to respond with some error codes. take out the memory and turn on the computer. do you hear any beeps like 4 one after the other? if not try turning on the system without the video card installed. you should hear long beeps but if not.....

the reason for this could be
1-the motherboard (if has some jumpers)has some jumpers that are configured or swithced wrong such as fsb or multipliers. (i have not looked at this model) check the config in the manual to make sure you have it set right.

no other hardware should be plugged into the board yet during this test. also when working make sure you unplug the system everytime you are doing a change.

worst case scenario is that your bios is corrupted which would suck but can be reflashed depending on if you have a pci video card and the files to do the flash. this is complex but i have done it before. these symptoms you are describing seems to be bios related or your motherboard is being grounded by the case if you had not tested before installing it into the case which leads to my suggestion before installing a motherboard into a case.

good luck:thumbs:

[ME BIGGD01]

look at this picture---make sure the bios jumper is like this.

[BobtheCkroach]

Heeeeeey....this sounds vaguely familiar!

On my old computer, I recently decided to get it working as a secondary system...when i connected everything, i got a moving fan, the HDD would rev up, the drives and case front would light up...but no activity...no video.

What I eventually found was that I had taken off the heatsink at some point and then replaced it w/o putting new paste on....as soon as I applied paste, I had a working system....sooo.....did your friend put heatsink paste on when he put the new heatsink on? Did he do it adequately?

I'm sure that BIGG, JIM and everyone else could definitely be right (they're better at this than I), but I know that I got similar symptons from not having adequate heatsink paste, so perhaps that it?