Almost Dead Computer

Okay I am stumped. I have a brand new MSI KT 266 Pro 2 Mother board with an AMD 1.8 Ghz chip. 512 Mb ddr ram. I have connected everything, and checked all connections. Problem??? Nothing works. Power supply will come on, and the fan for the chip operates, power button to turn it on and off works. However, hard drive, cd/rom, monitor, and floppy drive do not operate. As if there is no power. Any suggestions??

 

Hi oceans29, welcome to TSG....

Try reseating the ram and cpu, if you have more than one stick of ram, pull all but one, then give it another shot....if that doesn't work pull any add in cards except for the video card, disconnect cd drive(s) and try with just one hard drive, floppy, ram chip, cpu and video card.

 

Okay I will give that a try, I only have one hard drive, one cd drive, and one 512 mb ram chip, I will try seating that into a different slot. It was very hard to get the chip fan installed, and I am somewhat leary of trying to remove that but if necesary I will. I only had a video and sound card plugged in, I will also remove the sound card and see if that makes any difference.

 

Okay tried it by reseating the ram, only having my video card in and no luck. I attempted to try and undo the fan, however there is a lot of tension, and a piece of plastic splintered off, I felt like if I applied any more pressure the board would crack. Think if that is my only option I will take it to the place where I bought it and let them do it.

 

Try running with minimum components as AcaCandy said. However, I am not sure if your mobo supports your cpu. Do you have 1.8 Ghz, or 1800+? Do you have the XP? The fastest XP and MP AMD has out is I think the 1900+. (which isn't 1.9Ghz) Your board supports up to 1900+ so I will assume you have 1800+ and that it should work. If you have the MP though, MSI doesn't say anything about the MP being supported. Other than that everything checks out ok. Also, try booting with no HD and just vid card and cpu and ram. Should still say no OS if there is no HD.

 

Thanks, yes chip is an xp 1800. I will give that a try, but none of the other components work, no monitor, no nothing except for fans. I will give your method a shot and see what happens.

 

does the cpu fan come on? or just the ps fan? how many fans do you have, and which ones are getting power? So just to get this straight... you turn it on and the ps fan comes on, and nothing else... nothing to the moniter? What color light is the power switch on the moniter? Does the D-LED come on at all? Does the soft power button on the front light up? Does anything light up, anywhere? A had a very similar problem with a much older computer and haven't fixed it yet... Hopefully you will be able to sort yours out.

 

only the cpu fan, the power supply fan come on. No lights. The more I think about it the more I think it is the chip, either not installed right or not seated right, drat!! Ane it is very hard to get the cpu fan off with all that tension, but I am at that point it has to be done. Is there a special method to removeing the fan?? Does the mother board need to be on some sort of slid surface out of the case??

 

Was the fan on the CPU from the factory or did you install it? Hope it's not the problem of a cracked core or puting the thermal grease in the wrong place.

 

I installed it, and no one told me about grease so now I am almost positive this has to be my problem. Double drat!! On my initial startup I did smell somthing burning such as wire, so I immediately turned it off.

 

Hate to say this but it sounds like you damaged the processor while attaching the fan as Rockn said. Sorry

 

Okay I replaced the processor, put grease on the heat sink, was extra careful installing it, and the fan, and guess what? It still is doing the same exact thing. ANy more ideas?? Could it be the mother board??

 

Yes, it could be the motherboard.....but check to be sure the power supply connection to the motherboard is nice and tight.....

 

Are you building this from scratch? If so, have you checked that the jumper configurations for the processor, front side bus and memory is correct on the motherboard? Other possibilities include the memory module being in the wrong slot (if using only one), incorrect memory, incompatible graphics card or motherboard grounding to case. I would take the mobo out of the case and start from scratch by first installing everything I could to the mobo and double checking all jumper settings as I go. As a matter of fact I usually connect everything and try to boot up before I actually install the mobo in the case. Good luck. kw1

 

Yes I am building this from scratch. I am not familiar with the jumper settings on the motherboard. Okay the jumper on the cd/rw drive was on master so I switched that to slave. I am not sure what, if any jumpers I may want to change on my mother board. This is a grey area. Also the jumper for the hard drive is on the far right setting, no book with this hard drive, but it is a western digital. No jumpers are on the floppy drive. I have not tried anything yet but do not beleive changing one jumper will change everything. Motherboard was installed with spacers and washers so there should not be any grounding taking place. Any help with the jumper settings or other ideas would be helpful.