I am posting this in the hope someone can give a logical explination. Have just assembled a PC.
P4PE - P4 2.66 - 2X512GB crucial memory - 80gb maxtor HD - 2X120gb maxtor sata HD - Matrox G550 Graphics Card. - 400w jeantech Power Supply. Plextor CD/DVD Rom - Plextor DVD burner - Although I do not intend to have a floppy, I have tried one connected just encase, but still no sign of life.
all in a jeantech aluminimum case.
Connected Power. Power is present, fans and lights come on. But no sign of any other life.
No bleeps at all, not even the one bleep sound.
The monitor shows nothing and green light is just flashing. Tried another Monitor, this shows a message for a few seconds, stateing NO SIGNAL PRESENT. and switches off.
I have tried another Graphics Card still no signal getting to monitor.
I have tried taking out and putting back in connectors. All power connectors are fitted, even tried fitting the extra Asus Power connector. The Power Supply has a rateing well above the required wattage and amps.
Before I take it all to bits again and re-assemble I wondered if anyone has any suggestions as to what could be wrong.
It seems to me that it is obviously a signal problem to the monitor not only because I have had a signal telling me it is, but because there are no signs of life ffrom the board with bleeps.
The red led is on (on the MB showing power ok) also the voltage is ok for the Graphic Cards as the warning light is not on.
I know this is difficult to comment on, but like I said, maybe someone has some ideas?
Thank's Ron.
i've had this twice
the first was due to CPU fan not being plugged in
i doubt that is yours but you never know.
the second was worrying,
this was due to a hardrive going faulty and the power supply on the drive shorting out.
the drive was fine before i upgraded the MB and Processor but when i'd stuck it back together the machine had a light come on but did not kick into life, unplug the hardrive and away it went.
you may want to try disconnecting certain devices and try to boot up without them and see if anything happens.
Mad
Right, the best thing to do would be to unplug all of the extra hard drives and ram and start basic. Use only one stick of ram and your 80gb which i presume will be your system drive. You need to create some form of elimination. Make sure that your also only starting out with the graphics card, floppy, and cdrom drive, no modems, soundcards etc.
Make sure you have a good boot disk if needed.
You might find that its a dodgy circuit board on the power supply! not powering out properly.
just a thought i've also had this in someone elses machine check the processor is seated properly and is the right way around
When you press the 'On button' do the Power supply, CPU and Chipset fans spin up? If not then is the Soft on power connector connected correctly?
It's unlikely to be video related, If the system is not powering, then it won't have got far enough to be outputting any signal yet.
There are two power connectors for the motherboard, the 'normal' ATX connector which has 20 pins arranged in 2 rows and a 4 pin (2x2) connector supplying the additional 12v required by your Motherboard make sure they are bothe connected.
Double check the mounting posts for the motherboard to case and make sure you only have posts where there are corresponding holes in the motherboard. It's easy to put a post in a hole that doesn't quite line up and so short out the motherboard preventing it from powering up.
As has already been stated. CPU inserted correctly? CPU Fan connected to the CPU FAN connector? RAM properly seated? CMOS jumper reset and then put back to the 'in use' position.
You don't need any drive connected at this point to see if all is ok so far just connect monitor and power up. You will get BIOS POST (power on self test) and 'no boot device available' type message if all is OK so far. Add drives, making sure you have power to the SATA drives. There are probably 2 ways to connect power to SATA drives, Old style Molex 4 way is easiest if available. Make sure IDE cables for Plextors are connected right way round, this can prevent boot.
HTH
Trev
Hi, thank's everyone. Noted all points mentioned.
I diconnected the SATA Drives and I changed the Hard Drive. Also took out one stick of memory. I also took out the screw that was holding the Graphics Card in place on the display output connector as it looked like it was pulling/lifting the Card up a bit.
Guess what, it booted up OK (really pleased about that) What I don't know yet is what was causing the problem. So I will reinstall and see what will cause the problem again!!!
Thanks again everyone, will not be able to do the rest of the test today, so will report back as soon as I can.
I have always been a bit concerned as to how best to install the memory and have posted about this in the past. The reason for my concern is that the MB manual makes reference to only using certain combinations (page 2-11)But to be honest I have always found what has been written unclear as to its meaning. ie
What do they mean by rows (0&1) (rows 2&3) (rows 3&2) When making reference to DDR DIMM 1, 2 and 3
Also what is meant by double sided, I assume it means there are chips(or what ever they are) on both sides? Mine do have them on both sides (8 on each)So I assume I have double sided??
I had the two 512mb in What is refered to in the manual as DDR DIMM 2 AND 3 ie the two rows nearest to the IDE Connectors. Looking at the manual maybe it can be read that this will not work? But, the confusing bit (at least to me it is) is the reference to the rows as 2&3 3&2 and 0&1 I really cannot relate to that.
At present I have one stick of 512 in DDR DIMM 3 and it works and shows up on screen as 512mb .
Can someone please tell me in simple terms like.
Put a 512 in what two rows so I get my full memory from both sticks of 512.
I realise that you may only be able to answer this if you have the same motherboard or access to a manual, but this would really help. Thanks all the best.
Ron.
I dont think you will get any beeps until you load bios defaults.
Is the voltage of the cards correct for the mb?
Are you trying to fit 3.3v cards into a 1.5v MB?
Some motherboards just dont like some agp cards whether they work in other pcs or not.
You appear to be thinking that nothing is working but as I said you won`t get beeps so all that has happened is you cant get a picture on the monitor and this is the most common fault in any new build so if I were you I would concentrate my efforts on the agp card!
Good luck!
STOP PRESS!!!!!!!
HERE`S YOUR ANSWER:- quote:
ITs a known problem. Buy an aftermarket heatsink and fan for the CPU and it
should fix the problem. The intel OEM ones short out the board.
Ron,
when I assembled my system on the P4PE a year ago, I had exactly the same problem!
Removing and re-seating the graphics card cured it. I had to repaeat the process after a few weeks, but a change of card has solved it.
With my previous build (which was a PIII) it did not make any move to start either. That turned out to be the CPU not being properly seated. It looked OK, but the locking arm was not quite down fully. If you do disturb your CPU/ heatsink assembly, you willl damage the thermal transfer pad. You will have to remove its mortal reamains and replace it with gunge from a tube.
It is worth using an aftermarket heatsink for the noise reduction - try QuietPc or Cooolermaster.
Hi, I had exactly the same problem a couple of weeks back with a self-build. Turned out the motherboard was shorting against one of the the supporting pins that hold it to the chasis. I was told that Giga-byte boards are especially prone to this and that you can use plastic support/spacers instead of metallic ones. I just re-seated the board and hey presto! Good luck, hope it's as simple as this - and if reseating rhe graphics card caused the Mobo to distort, it may well be the answer.
Ron,
On my P4PE I have two 512MB sticks of Crucial memory in the two slots nearest the processor, which I take to be slots 1 and 2. This gives me the full 1024MB. These have eight pairs of chips on each stick, and on P2_11 of the motherboard manual it talks about X16 DDR modules, presumably 16 X 32 MB chips.
I have always assumed from the wording of the manual that the single/double sided has more to do with the contacts than the chip positions. I think some (more expensive) memory sticks must have half the number of double capacity memory chips compared with the standard ones, i.e. 8 X 64 MB chips, so they only need to use the contacts on one side of the stick. Perhaps someone who knows could enlighten us all?
If you only have 2X 512 sticks of DDR put them in row 2/3 & 4/5. Or, 0/1 & 4/5. This enables the DDR feature. Must be the same explanation as the A7N8X manual and translated by the same person.
John.
Just checking that you're using Win XP not 98, 98 doesn't work with more than 512 RAM. Can't see it in your post, maybe I missed it.
Nick
Just checking that you're using Win XP not 98, 98 doesn't work with more than 512 RAM. Can't see it in your post, maybe I missed it.
Nick
Hi everyone and thank's again for all the help and advice. Yes it is XP, but at this stage, ie no Operating System installed it would not come into it.
Well there really seems to be many things that have caused people problems like I hhave experienced. Not sure what mine is yet, but I will establish that in the morning when I start connecting things up again.
At present I feel that the favortie is the memory and maybe the bad fitting Graphics Card.
The reason I say the memory is because thanks to an email someone sent to me ( they did not want to post it on the forum for some reason, maybe not a member, certainly not anyone I have seen)
However I can at last understand something about how the memory can be used on this board.
Quite simply it means that the 3 slots will only accept a total of 4 sides of memory between them.
ie if you have double sided memory in slots 1 & 2 you cannot have anything in slot 3. Knowing about the 4 sides ( ie 2 double sided or 1 double sided plus 2 single sided or you could have 3 single sided ie 1 in each slot ) it can be seen how the chart on page 2-11 can be read as to what it means. It also means that if you have a double sided memory in slot 3 you cannot have anything in slot 3 as they share the same rows, but you can have a single sided memory in each slot 2 and 3. Hope I have explained this OK.
It means as I had my two 512 double sided memory sticks in slots 2 and 3 it was a no go.
Also it seems that you should always install the memory from slot 1 and certainly have your largest amount of memory in slot 1.
Regarding the rows 0 - 1 - 2 - 3 It seems that the 0 is used as a number and relates to each side of a memory in each slot ie Slot 1 has the 2 rows called 0 and 1 which relate to either side of a double sided memory stick. if single sided it would be just 0 or 1. the same applies to slots 2 & 3 where the rows are known as 2 & 3 , but are reversed in each hence it will take 2 single sided but with a double in slot 2, that is your lot as far as slot 3 goes.
Well I hope that this may also help someone else to understand it. I can now only wait and see if that was the only problem I had.
All the best, Ron.
Have now established that the only problem was the way the Memory had been installed, ie in slots 2 & 3 which is not an acceptable configaration. Now in slots 1 & 2, everything OK.
It is interesting to see so many people provideing advise on this. More than 10 things were put forward as possible causes. I was pleasently surprised, maybe there are more people involved with system building than I thought.
My next move is to configure the two SATA drives in Raid 0 to provide a fast 240gb drive. The MB Manual suggest that this is done before installing the Operating System. However it refers to using FDISK to Format once the array has been created. Surely this would only apply if using say 98se for the OS? As I am going to use XP Pro, I would assume that it is ok to leave Formatting the array until the XP OS is Installing? Has anyone actually done this yet??
Thanks again, for all the advise and suggestions, all the best, Ron.
to format a raid array as raid 0 , you would be better doing so usung the firmware/bios commands available than doing it via windows install routine.
on my promise array you press control-s on boot up.
i only use raid0 for data storage so didn't do any raid installation until the system was already installed so can't answer the last question.
Ron,
If I were you, I would leave the SATA alone until you have the OS up and running. Only when you are sure the system is stable should you connect the SATA drives and go into the BIOS when you re-boot and enable the controller. The method I describe below worked for me with a single ATA drive. It should work for you with a pair of SATA drives as you will see all the same screens.
1. Enter the BIOS at boot up. Navigate to find “Onboard SATA/RAID controller, and Enable this.
With the P4PE this is found on the PCI section of the Advanced menu. A new entry appears below this when it is enabled “On-board ATA device firstâ€. Change the to .
Save the changes and exit.
2. With Windows 2000, log on as Administrator. The “New Hardware found†wizard appears for an “SCSI Raid Controllerâ€
My driver was on the motherboard CD. I inserted it, directed the wizard to find the driver on the CD, which it did. I followed the prompts and the correct driver was installed.
3. Check in Device Manager that SCSI and RAID Controllers > WinXP Promise FastTrak 376 is present and correct.
4. Shut down and connect the drive using the supplied Master only 80 - conductor IDE lead, blue end to the motherboard (note that pin 1 is at the opposite end to the PRI and Sec IDE connectors on the P4PE).
5. Re-boot. Be ready to hit as soon as the FastTrak BIOS screen appears, (after the initial drive recognition screens) to enter the RAID array build.