2 replies to this topic

[Mad Mac]

So....heres what we have. Brother-in-law is building a machine for his daughter and cant get it to work, so guess who has to bail him out (yet again)...

Specs are:

Motherboard - Elitegroup KN1 Lite

RAM - 4 x Kingston KVR400/1GR

HD - Maxtor DiamondMax 10 (GV200 E0)

Video Card - GeForce 6200 LE

Processor - AMD Athlon 64

Story is that he brings it to me on Sunday night, will power up but no video. In the course of testing yesterday, I discover that on plugging in the 4-pin power plug (2x +12V, 2x ground) the power supply trips out, this happens with everything disconnected, RAM and processor out. Conclude MB is bad, exchange it, now PSU holds OK with this plugged in but still no video. Video card has been changed with both old and new MB, no result. All PSU voltages checked and look OK.

I'm trying to approach this rationally (get one thing working at a time). Where am I going wrong?

[Keinokuorma]

There was years ago a case I ran into, a batch of motherboards (don't remember brand no more) where the CMOS RESET jumper was ON by factory default. This kinda kept anything from happening. Don't know if this is the case, but it ise easy to overlook - kept me quite baffled for a while.

[ether.real]

Are you getting any beep codes?

 

The first thing I would do is try and boot the system with a stripped down install, meaning:

Have only the following components plugged in:

1)PSU

2)Motherboard

3) Single Stick of RAM

4) CPU (Make sure heatsink fan is plugged in)

5) Video card

Run this OUTSIDE of the case on a non-conductive surface. 

-Make sure to plug power into the video card (if it has a plug).

If it still does not boot:

a)Swap in a different stick of RAM.

b)Reset CMOS overnight.  Do this by removing the CMOS battery, unplugging the PSU from the wall, placing the CMOS jumper to reset, press the power button for 15 seconds, and then leave overnight.  When done, put the jumper back in default location, put the battery back in, then plug the PSU back into the wall.  See if it boots up. 

c) Make sure your monitor isnt dead.

d) Get a cheap PCI based GPU (not PCI-e) and test it. 

It is my guess that the old PSU probably frazzled one of your components.  Once you get to this point, the only surefire way to see which component has been toasted is to swap them out one at a time.