pc does not boot up

[Mr anderson]

hi all, i have prob? my pc does not want to boot up, by this i mean, nothing no post checks no beeps! i thought it cld be the psu, so i took a working one and put it in again nothing, other than the green led in front came on. at first i thought it could be the psu but now im starting to think the mother board as gone awol? anyiedas

[steveryan]

I'm no computer expert but I think that the people that are may require a bit more info.

[redwudz]

MB failure would be my first guess also. But try a few things first:

I'm assuming when you push the front power button the power light comes on, but that's all that happens. I'm also assuming you get no drives spinning up and no lights except the front power light.

Unplug all drives except boot. Remove all cards except video. Try again.

If no, unplug the boot drive and remove the memory and the video card. If no beeps, then the MB would be about all that's left if you have already ruled out the power supply.

[Mr anderson]

ok will try and get bk 2 u:P

[bevills1]

Suggestions by redwudz solved this problem for me a couple of times and identified a bad mobo another time; however, on all 3 of my instances it was when building new systems. The only other possibility might be the battery on the mobo since weak or dead battery can cause serious BIOS problems and other problems. Replacement battery is only 4 or 5 bucks if you want to try that, and it's most likely bad mobo if not bad battery.

[Mr anderson]

Hi all i would like to say a big thanks to redwudz, its the mobo. now comes the step where i want to ask which mobo would be the best


ECS P4M800PRO-M (1.0) SKT775 AGP 6channel audio onboard vga mATX

or

Asus P4V800D-X SKT 478 PT880 Ultra ATX - Sound Lan USB 2.0 800MHz FSB SATA 133

i found them both on www.ebuyer.co.uk, and would the memory run ok in these? many thnx again

[redwudz]

What's your present CPU and memory speed? Your profile says AMD CPU, but you're asking about Pentium 4 motherboards?

I'm not a fan of VIA chipset motherboards, but they should perform well enough. I favor Asus, but I've used some ECS MBs with no problems. The ECS, if I read it properly has on-board video, while the Asus doesn't. On-board uses some system memory. If you have a video card already, the Asus may be the better choice of the two.

The best advice for MB shopping is to plug the MB name into Google and add the word 'reviews' after it. See what others say about that particular MB. The more information you have, the better.

As for memory, most newer MBs work well on DDR 400 (PC 3200) type. If you only have PC2100 or PC2700, OK for now. Some MBs, like the ECS you mentioned can use the newer DDR2, which is not too much more expensive.

[Mr anderson]

Hi, I own a couple of pc's, The one that went was a p4 mobo 2.5GHz Processor & Pc i belie them mem is pc2100 or a pc2200.

[redwudz]

I thought that might be the case. I would upgrade the memory to PC3200 if you can afford it. PC2100 won't get the best out of a newer motherboard. At least in this part of the world, DDR2 4200 is about the same price as DDR 3200, so that's something to consider if the motherboard you choose supports it. But check out a few different motherboards. There is a lot of variety out there.