Help! I have just bought a new mainboard to replace one which seemed to be failing. Upon powering up, all the fans start running and everything seems to start fine but quickly freezes at early mainboard initialization. I get no picture to the monitor at all (does not come out of standby), and I think BIOS is not booting, but obviously am not sure as I can't see anything.

Any ideas? I have tried replacing mainboard, psu, cpu, hdd, graphics, memory, all with items known to work but still the same problem.

Any ideas please?

Does the new modern motherboard support the older memory that you have put in it? Come to think of it, does it definitely support your older processor that you've fitted (i.e. front-side bus speed, clock multiplier, etc)?

I'm assuming from what you've said that the motherboard is the only thing different in the system and that you've kept all the original bits and just plugged them straight in as they were before?

Apart from the fans making a noise, can you hear the hard disk starting up. You can normally hear it start to spin and make a noise for a second or two. If it's actually booting up into Windows (even though you can't see it on the screen), you'll hear it make a "chugging" noise for around a minute.

Does the system beep at all? A single beep is the BIOS saying "everything checked out OK, I'm going to carry on loading the operating system". Several beeps are the BIOS diagnostic code to tell you what isn't working and why it's not carrying on.

No BIOS beep generally means something that's fitted to the motherboard is incompatible with the current settings. In this instance, I recommend unplugging as much as possible - can you get it to display something on the screen when there are no drives attached and no PCI cards plugged in (obviously the graphics card needs to stay in there!).

Yes, the motherboard definitely supports the processor, have checked that and tried another working one also.

Have tried stripping it down so it's just the board, the graphics card (and have tried it with another card too) and the processor. Still no joy.

Have also tried it all with another different motherboard, and both have been brand new so I'm convinced it's not a dogdy motherboard.

have also tried clearing the CMOS

So far the current (major) components are:

ASRock K7S8X motherboard
Athlon XP 2000+
512mb PC3200 DDR (but have tried without this also)
GeForce 4 MX440 graphics card AGP4
60GB Western Digital EIDE 100M/bs

I have checked to make sure that nothing is shorting the board, and there's nothing as far as I can see. Someone has suggested that it could be the case that is the problem? Have you ever experienced this, and why would this be?

Very grateful for any advice

Even two different motherboards have the same problem? That's weird.

The only reason I could think of that the case would be the cause of the problems would be if it had a dodgy power supply, which isn't very common unless the case is quite old.

Looks like you've checked everything else out pretty thoroughly though.

My only other thought is that maybe you're connecting the pin connectors (power switch, hard disk LED, power LED, etc) the wrong way round and it's causing an issue. I can't think what else would be the same to cause the problem with so many different components that you've tested

Hi yeah I have the same problem bought all new kit from Dabs

K7s8x board
256 (pc2100) ram
Xp2000 processor
dabs value ATI radeon 7000 64mg graphics card
pci modem
standard 10gig hdd

and nothing tried different mem hdd graphics with or without the modem with out most things with most things and a differnet case absoultly nothing

I had this problem too! You may need a new power supply for the new motherboard. There is a little 4 pin ATX2 12v connector which you need to give more power to the motherboard. I got a new psu with this cable and it all worked fine! (until it came to installing windows,which is another story ;o)

It's not unusual to have faulty motherboards in sept I ordered a new mobo, graphics card, CPU, heatsink, DDR ram connected them all up and nothing not even 1 beep stripped it all down to just mobo,cpu fan and graphics card still nowt. ...sent the board back it was faulty so got another board still the same problem.. this time I sent ram,cpu and mobo and got a reply they were all faulty...is that unlucky or not??......finally got new mobo,cpu,ram and all's working fine now

Did you send them back to the manufacturer or the retail outlet? Im still having problems with mine. I cant install windows as it cant copy certain files across from the OS disk