Arg!

Myranda

Can someone punch the online computer community? 

Two gigabyte motherboards I've had have done the same thing when trying to boot them up using the PentiumG850 I'm wanting to use as an HTPC.

They turn on,

Run the fans for a few seconds,

Turn off,

Rinse repeat ad infinitum.

Now, they have said "it's the PSU" despite my pointing out I've tried two PSUs, one of which works perfectly, with that CPU in another motherboard... 

Oh, it's the RAM - trying it without RAM gets the same effect

Then it's the PSU

No... it's not.

Phil_aka_Pip

Same as the Indians at the BT support place "The reason your broadband doesn't work is because Windows is incorrectly installed. Please re-install Windows"

Yeah right.

TTony

It's actually because your Internet connection is too fast.

:P

Sporky

What connection to the monitor?

PolarityMan

Did you let go of the power button?

Jalapeno

That ^^^^  - you might  need to keep it pressed for 10secs or so.

It's Gigabyte's way of telling you you've make a balls up.

Badly seated chip (or chip not suitable for BIOS etc)
Badly seated RAM  (or wrong speed, too slow, too fast is ok)
Badly seated controller card

Rip everything out and start again...... slowly

Emp_Fab

As Mr Peno says.  Try it with just the motherboard, CPU (with heatsink and fan) and RAM.  If you want to eliminate a possible dodgy power switch (quite common) - disconnect the the multi-pin jobby to the front panel and briefly short the power switch pins on the motherboard.  The CPU fan should stay running.  If it doesn't, are you sure you have it connected to the correct fan outlet on the board ?  Often boards will shut down if they cannot detect the CPU fan speed.

Have you checked for any shorts to the chassis (perhaps when mounting the m/board ?).  It's either not actually trying to start up (some boards do an 'initialisation routine' when you first switch the mains on (fans spin then stop), or it may be starting correctly then shutting itself down as it's detected a fault (e.g. no cpu fan / short / etc).  The CPU is in ok isn't it ?  You haven't got a ringpull from a can of Monster Ripper lying across any of the connectors ? 

Myranda

Jalapeno said:

That ^^^^  - you might  need to keep it pressed for 10secs or so.

It's Gigabyte's way of telling you you've make a balls up.

Badly seated chip (or chip not suitable for BIOS etc)
Badly seated RAM  (or wrong speed, too slow, too fast is ok)
Badly seated controller card

Rip everything out and start again...... slowly

Erma gurd! Dat's where I been going wrong!

This was doing it with just the CPU installed - the board has no pc speaker output, no diagnostic lights...

After about a billion hair pulling frustration moments eventually it decided to tell me the bios was screwed and reinstalled from a backup - automatically so why did it spend 4 hours buggering about?! After that it's been good as gold

CPU had been running for a couple of weeks in an expensive overclocking board (not clocked) ... transfering it to a new board should have been five minutes... I even reset the cmos took out the bios battery then reseated it and tried again nowt... then it just decided to work.

H77N-WIFI from Gigabyte - cheap as chips and covered in ports, but with no beeps or lights if something doesn't work it's time to guess! 

Sporky

Not that it's relevant here, but the reason I asked about the monitor connection is that there's a known issue with Displayport. Many of the cables have pin 20 connected when it shouldn't be, and this can result in the graphics card/chip set refusing to start up at boot.

Myranda

That would seem like a silly error.. but I shall try to remember it for the future

Sporky

It is silly - the Displayport specs are absolutely clear that cables (other than those that have one end captive to a device requiring power down the DP cable) should not have pin 20 connected, but most of the cables I tried had it in place.

Myranda

Hmm...

Got my main PC running using the stick of not-sot-great ram that wont work in the cheaper board (looks like I'll have to wait till monday now )

It had come up with a Hardware error set of beeps so I'd assumed it wasn't able to make the RAM live this time... turns out with a monitor attached it tells you the problem...

There's a fan header RIGHT NEXT to the cpu... oh, that must be the CPU fan header... apparently not - that's on the edge of the board quite some distance away... hmm Works now... but who puts a port next to the thing that needs that port, but isn't the right port for the thing that needed that port?

mike_l

I'm confused now.

 

Jalapeno

Myranda said:

Hmm...

Got my main PC running using the stick of not-sot-great ram that wont work in the cheaper board (looks like I'll have to wait till monday now )

It had come up with a Hardware error set of beeps so I'd assumed it wasn't able to make the RAM live this time... turns out with a monitor attached it tells you the problem...

There's a fan header RIGHT NEXT to the cpu... oh, that must be the CPU fan header... apparently not - that's on the edge of the board quite some distance away... hmm Works now... but who puts a port next to the thing that needs that port, but isn't the right port for the thing that needed that port?

<ahem>  RTFM

Myranda

So was I!

About two weeks ago I bought *some* secondhand bits from ebay peeps to build a computer.

Now due to budgeting reasons the computer was far perfect, and rather annoyingly I'd managed to buy two motherboards at once (for one chip)

One was a gigabyte board which turns out to be meh, and one was a high spec mATX board. The RAM I bought is evidently not 100% as only the expensive board can run both sticks... so this was a mATX Z77 board in a full ATX tower so old that there was no where to mount an SSD (which was fine at this stage as there wasn't one) it was also too big to fit by the telly...

So, this weekend saw a lot more bits arrive - now the little chip is in a little mITX board, and an appropriate case, fits in lovely (looks like a surround subwoofer). The board for this one is a gigabyte one as well... this refused to boot, or do anything for bloomin hours, then just decided it must have had a bios fault and corrected it. However, only one stick of RAM would work.

The other bits made a gaming PC, except that the 1866mhz ram for it hasn't arrived so it's using the 2gb stick of 667mhz ram so I can get all the drivers and stuff installed... but when I put the proper chip into this machine I'd forgotten to look at the little writing next to the fan headers and installed the CPU fan onto the Case Fan 1 header... hence why this one wouldn't boot...

See, simples really

Myranda

Jalapeno said:

Myranda said:

Hmm...

Got my main PC running using the stick of not-sot-great ram that wont work in the cheaper board (looks like I'll have to wait till monday now )

It had come up with a Hardware error set of beeps so I'd assumed it wasn't able to make the RAM live this time... turns out with a monitor attached it tells you the problem...

There's a fan header RIGHT NEXT to the cpu... oh, that must be the CPU fan header... apparently not - that's on the edge of the board quite some distance away... hmm Works now... but who puts a port next to the thing that needs that port, but isn't the right port for the thing that needed that port?

<ahem>  RTFM

Well, why did I need to do that? I was only moving changing the CPU and ram on it... right.... what could possibly go wrong?!