help, failed conroe setup blank screen of death

[Garry123]

:eek: Finally built my new conroe pc today and it didn't work. :thumbsdow

I have the following:

Asus P5B mobo
Core 2 duo 2.14Ghz
2Gb Oz ddr2
SATA 150 HD (from old machine)
saphire 1900xt
Antec 500w ATX2 PSU

Connected them all up. The PC starts up but nothing is displayed on the monitor. No warning beeps or similar. I don't even get the initial gfx card text. Any ideas? I'm hoping to solve the problem before I have to take my PC to Microdirect and ask them to fix it. I got all the bits there.

Could it be a cpu, mobo or card failure?

Please help. :lease:

[apolloa]

Try this for starters:
Unplug all your drives from the motherboard and also unplug the power to all your drives, re seat the memory, look through the mother board manuel carefully to ensure you haven't missed a hidden jumper setting, make sure the graphics card is plugged in properly in the right slot and has the correct power to it, try 1 stick of memory in various slots, make sure everything is plugged on the motherboard correctly like CPU fan, case USB ports etc.
Does the CPU and GFX card fans spin? are there power on lights on the front of the case? Are there any extra mounting posts on the case mother board mounting plate that aren't needed you have forgotten to remove?
Is the monitor powered on and the power light on? is the case speaker plugged on the right way round.

Just a small list of things to try first.

[Rasczak]

Connected them all up. The PC starts up but nothing is displayed on the monitor. No warning beeps or similar. I don't even get the initial gfx card text. Any ideas? I'm hoping to solve the problem before I have to take my PC to Microdirect and ask them to fix it. I got all the bits there.
Have you checked to see if the CPU fan is spinning? I rebuilt my PC recently and had the same symptoms - turned out I hadn't connected the CPU power supply :blush: :blush: :blush: Not sure if this applies to conroe chips or not - and it is probably a little too 'newbie' for most :suicide: I remain embarrassed now.

[DarkEntity]

:eek: Finally built my new conroe pc today and it didn't work. :thumbsdow

I have the following:

Asus P5B mobo
Core 2 duo 2.14Ghz
2Gb Oz ddr2
SATA 150 HD (from old machine)
saphire 1900xt
Antec 500w ATX2 PSU

Connected them all up. The PC starts up but nothing is displayed on the monitor. No warning beeps or similar. I don't even get the initial gfx card text. Any ideas? I'm hoping to solve the problem before I have to take my PC to Microdirect and ask them to fix it. I got all the bits there.

Could it be a cpu, mobo or card failure?

Please help. :lease:


Your first stop would be to plug speakers into the diagnostic port on the mobo...assuming it has onboard sound. It speaks to you and tells you what the problem is

[alphaomega16]

My motherboard requires the rectangle connector and a 4-pin molex like the PCI-E Graphics Cards do before it will work if your motherboard is similiar you might need to power connections going into your motherboard.

http://i3.photobucket.com/albums/y98/alphaomega16/1179_l.jpg

Make sure you got leads going into the both I have marked inside the white perimeter.

If you have already done this then ignore if not give it a shot.

[Garry123]

Thanks for all the replies.

CPU and GFX card fans are all spinning. All power connectors are in the board.

Apolla - What do you mean by mounting posts?

DarkEntity - It has onboard sound. Are you joking though? Do I just plug into one of the speaker ports?

IMonitor is switched on. I've built PC's before and this is the first time it has gone wrong. Pain as i had to rebuild my old pc to come and get advice.

Anymore advice?

[alphaomega16]

Sorry mate the only thing that I never saw I said you got me baffled.

Could possibly be bad mobo or PSU.

[apolloa]

Thanks for all the replies.

CPU and GFX card fans are all spinning. All power connectors are in the board.

Apolla - What do you mean by mounting posts?

DarkEntity - It has onboard sound. Are you joking though? Do I just plug into one of the speaker ports?

IMonitor is switched on. I've built PC's before and this is the first time it has gone wrong. Pain as i had to rebuild my old pc to come and get advice.

Anymore advice?

What I mean is the little brass posts or whatever you have in your case that you screw your motherboard to.
You need to make sure your case speaker is plugged onto your motherboard and that you have speakers plugged into the audio port that gives warning beeps (Look in the motherboard manuel) and switched on. If you are getting NO warning sounds then you need to reseat and recheck everything, you have used heat paste between the CPU fan and CPU and you didn't use too much to overflow and short anything?
Do you have an old graphics card that will fit in your motherboard? And try 1 stick of memory, or take out ALL memory and ALL cards, make sure the speakers are plugged in and switch it on to see if it beeps or not.

[Repton]

New components rarely are faulty, I had to plug in my 4 pin power connector and re positioned the 2 ram sticks before my worked.

[sibeer]

They are sometimes faulty though, I think apolloa gave a great list. The only thing he didn't add which I sometimes do is seat the motherboard on a wooden desk rather than in the case when fault testing. This makes double sure there is no short on the back of the board.

Your PC should be as minimal as possible for testing, then change whatever components you can i.e.

Board with CPU,
Fully connected PSU,
Just Power switch connection to the front panel connectors,
One stick of memory,
PCI Graphics card.

If that doesn't boot try changing the memory around (different slots and modules if possible) and swap the PSU. If it still doesn't boot then you are most likely to have a faulty motherboard or faulty / incompatible RAM (the graphics and PSU having been ruled out by swap overs). The CPU is very unlikely to be the faulty component (unless Intel have dropped the ball with Conroe)

[Garry123]

Rebuilt the PC again today. Started with just the power to mobo, cpu and nothing else plugged in. I would have expected a warning beep, but nothing. Tried memory in different slots, nothing. Put gfx card in and again nothing. Unfortunately i don't have any old bits i can swap out. But with the mobo not giving out any warning beeps, it sounds like it's died. :thumbsdow

Taking the whole rig in too MD on Tuesday, see what they say. Probably cost me more money. :god:

[Sephiro]

I take it you have tried DarkEntity's suggestion and plugged some headphones/speakers into the onboard sound (if it's the same as my Asus mobo it will be the green headphone socket you are looking for), because recent Asus motherboards tend to use the voice POST reporter instead of beep codes.

[Garry123]

Ahh, the only thing i have not tried. I'll give it a whirl. Forgot about that.

[Garry123]

Apolloa.

Guess what no joy. Plugged the psu and motherboard up on my desk. Plugged in headphones and nothing. Tried all the sound ports. Plugged in gfx card, nothing.

Would you recommend taking everything back in their boxes? Guy at the shop said take my pc in. I thought it would be easier to fault find the parts on a desk. I don't fancy leaving my PC there.

I hope it's not the PSU, i've read on the net problems with neo PSU's and other ASUS mobos.

[apolloa]

Hmmmm, sorry Garry mate, it sounds like something has died. I would take back the motherboard, memory, PSU, CPU and graphics card. Get them to test it while you wait if needs be. I have seen failed Asus boards in my time, not many granted but when you knock em out at the rate Asus do your bound to get some failure. Asus do good returns though so the shop should have no quams in exchanging it. But you must make sure they test all your bits if they can as you can't swap them out to test them yourself.
What PSU did you buy?
Don't forget to put your components in there boxes ot anti static bags when you transport them.
As you have built PC's before I take it you did remember to ground yourself to discharge your static when building it?

[Garry123]

Yeh, I grounded myself. Do you think i should leave the cpu and fan attached to the board or dismantle them?

I bought the Antec Neo HE 500.

[apolloa]

I would leave the CPU and fan on the mother board, just try and put them both into the motherboard bag, take all your boxes and bits I doubt they will ask for them if they replace something but you never know.
I've never heard of the NEO PSU, Seasonic are very good as are
Tagan. I would get a Seasonic S12-500 or S12-600,both very powerful and reliable. Custom PC tested them and gave them the top rating, when they test PSU's they try to destry them pretty much to give you an idea of the load they can take and what power they give on the 5v and 12v rails. But they cost between 70 and 80 pounds, still pay for what you get.

[Dazzyman]

Sometimes they are faulty its just one of those things. Ive had a dead motherboard and a dead CPU before. When it was the CPU mine did a similar thing it wouldnt boot (Ive had one start to fail and it tells you in bios boot though). When it was the motherboard though it wouldnt start as no power was getting thru. The only thing I can think of suggesting is check the motherboard to see how to short it to drain all bios out incase for some odd reason its been used before and its a conflict with the new CPU. Its not as if its a daft fault with wiring your case up wrong either as theres definetly power getting thru so my instinct would be its a faulty board.

[Greg]

Does it boot up and seem like the hard drive is loading as normal, but the screen remains black the whole time? If so, I had a similar issue and it was my graphics card that was knackered. Got no different beeps either on starting up.

[Garry123]

To be honest I couldn't here the hard disk for all the noise the GFX card was making. :rolleyes:

I'm hopefully taking it back tomorrow, so i'll let you know. Has anyone had any dealings with Microdirect and taking items back?

[Kwman]

I read somewhere that Asus Mobo's were compatible with Conroes only after a Bios upgrade. So in order to use a Conroe chip you would need to upgrade the mobo using an older Intel chip first.

Maybe you could do somemore research on the net to see if your Mobo falls into that category ?

[fathazza]

indeed, if you dont have the upto date bios then it wont boot with a conroe cpu

i was also reading the other day that the p5b board had some serious issues with a few different types of ram... do a google for p5b ad ocz for example...

[Joe Pineapples]

Joining this thread late on, but if its any use to you, for reference, i recently built a system for someone, with the following

Asus P5B motherboard
Conroe 6400 CPU (oem)
Thermaltake silent HSF
ATI X1900XT 512meg
2 x 1gig Corsair value select ram
Hitachi sata hard drive
Pioneer 111D DVD
Hiper 580w modular PSU

The only issue i encountered was a bios message 'Intel CPU ucode loading error', which i sorted with a bios upgrade (though with the error, i still installed windows no problem, so obviously not a major issue anyway). The P5B is classed by asus as 'conroe ready', so unless there were any very early versions of this board still knocking about, it should definetly at least post on startup.

[Garry123]

fathazza. Took your advice. Did a search on P5B and OCZ. Guess what there a compatability issues with the P5B. I found a thread with people having the same problem as me. Also people had to have their mobos bios updated as the their P5B didn't support the conroe chips even though it said on the box it did. Great.

So back to MD tomorrow to hopefully get my bios upgraded (can't update without a CPU that works) and probably charged a restock fee for the memory.

:nono: Be warned anybody getting the same setup as mine. :mad:

[apolloa]

Well, if you brought all your bits from the shop on advice of the salesman then you shouldn't be charged a restock fee as it wasn't your fault, the same if your motherboard doesn't have a compatible BIOS installed.
Let us know how you get on.

[DarkEntity]

DarkEntity - It has onboard sound. Are you joking though? Do I just plug into one of the speaker ports?


Yer, all new Asus boards do it. Check your manual.

[Garry123]

The only advice i didn't get was the memory. Doh. Should be ok though as I can play the mobo is not compatible in it's current state so give me a different make. I've got an email with the sales guy advice on it. :thumbsup:

I'll let you know what happens tomorrow.;)

[Garry123]

:clap: It's working. Turned out to be the memory. Now all I have to sort out is a cpu error code on start up, hopefully bios upgrade will sort this out and my DVD drive appering in green text on boot up. Oh yeh my memory has been downgraded by the mobo as well. Ithink this can be sorted in the bios though.

Thanks for all your help :smashin: :thumbsup:

[Joe Pineapples]

Now all I have to sort out is a cpu error code on start up, hopefully bios upgrade will sort this out

The only issue i encountered was a bios message 'Intel CPU ucode loading error', which i sorted with a bios upgrade

:)

and my DVD drive appering in green text on boot up

did this on my build too - i believe this is normal.

[Garry123]

Updated bios. CPU error code has gone. Manually set the memory to PC6400. All i need to do now is find away of getting the green text to go away.