Mobo wierdness

[Bowa]

Hi all. I just swapped in a new mobo (Gigabite k7-Triton) for my fried Leadtek. This is the very first hardware project of this kind for me, so naturally I was very nervous, and tripple-checked all the settings and jumpers. When I hit the power button, I got an LED light in the front, a little light went on on the mobo itself, and the fans looked like they wanted to spin, but never did - they just twitched.
I rechecked all the jumpers at least 4 more times, rechecked all the wires/cables/add-in cards, etc., Tried the RAM in all the other slots -- still no good. Any ideas what I should do next - before I lug it to CompUsa to see if their techs can find the problem?

Thanks a lot in advance!

BTW, my rig is as follows:

AMD XP 2800+ Barton
ATI AIW Radeon 9700 pro 128
512 DDR 400 RAM (getting another stick as soon as the rig starts working again)
80 gig HD (adding another one as per above)
CD Burner
DVD player

 

[Coyote]

I'd take the mobo out of the case to help rule out a short. I put the mobo on cardboard or newspaper or a phone book next to the case. Install just cpu (with HS+F), ram, and vid card. See if she'll fire up.

When I get a new mobo I do that as a test before I install it in the case.

Good Luck with it

Barton 2500+
Abit NF7-S v 2.0
Maxtor 60GB ATA 133 7200RPM
512MB Corsair Twinx 3200LL
9600 Pro
Enermax Noisetaker 420 watts
Win98SE

 

[Bowa]

Thanks - I'll try that tonight!

 

[Bowa]

Not sure what I did, but after taking EVERYTHING off the mobo last night and putting it all back in, it worked! However, now it doesn't recognize my CD Burner (which is not new - I've had it in my system since day1), and I'm able to "jump start" my comp just by hitting a random wire on the case, or touching the mobo with a screwdriver. That's NOT supposed to happen, right?

Also, after doing a WinXP "repair" installation with a MS rep over the phone, it looked like all was working fine, but when I started to install some drivers from the mobo's install disk (I think the only ones I did install were the nForce ones), I get some "not found...can't perform something chk" message very briefly, and the comp does a reboot. This loops and never completely lets me boot into windows. Anyone know what's up and how I can fix that?

 

[ChipDeath]

first point: When swapping motherboards it's usually advisable to completely re-format the drive, and re-install the OS on a nice blank disk. It's painful as you have to re-install everything, but it is a good spring clean...

That aside, are you SURE that ALL the little standoffs in the case line up with holes in the motherboard, and you haven't accidentally left one somewhere which is just touching the back of the mobo?

Also, what power supply do you have? Cheaper generic ones can often cause all sorts of problems.

---
Epox 8RDA+ rev1.1 w/ Custom NB HS
XP1700+ @205x11 (~2.26Ghz), 1.575Vcore
2x256Mb Corsair PC3200LL 2-2-2-4
Sapphire 9800Pro 420/744

 

[Bowa]

(Its a Turbolink Switching PS 420W, that has worked for me for over a year. There's a sticker on it that says "supports Pentium 4", but I have an AMD system - is that a problem?)


It still won't recognize my CD Burner that's on the same IDE cable (slave) as my DVD player (master) -- I'll try swapping a different cable in later to see if its that, but I doubt it.

I disabled SATA in the bios to see if that was the problem, but it didn't do anything.

I ran SiSoft's Sandra, and the only yellow warning I got was that my PS is running at 66C -- which it says is too high. What can I do about that?


There are no standoffs that are touching the mobo withough a screw in it - except the rear center mobo hole that there is no standoff for (my old one didn't have one there either).

 

[pat]

You have a ground somewhere in your case. Check mounting post. Check the power switch too, maybe there is a wire that is rubbing against sharp edge of your case.

-Always put the blame on you first, then on the hardware !!!