I work for an ISP and the other tech guy has been working on a computer for the owner for months now. He apparently keeps running into problems and from I understand has fried two motherboards. This week the motherboard came back again after being repared AGAIN so I took it upon myself to go back and put it together myself since he can't do it. I plugged up the power switch to the motherboard, both motherboard power connections from the power supply, the RAM, processor, and the video card. The standy late came on and I pressed the power button. Nothing happened.

Ideas?

what are the components(processor,video card, PSU, ram etc) that make up this system? and what OS?

off the top of my head it sounds like there is a defective device OR the board is defective. the first thing I would do is take out everything except the processor then add devices piece by piece turning on the computer after each piece is installed to see if it comes on. if it is a defective part then it will cease posting when you get to that part.

the fact that the motherboard was "fried" and "repaired" could mean that other components where damaged unless they were not in the system when it fried.

Its a Pentium 4 processor, Geforce4 video card, 400watt PSU, 2 sticks of 512mb of RAM (I tried both with only one stick in at a time), a 120gig HD (that is what is currently hooked up to the board). Although, the standby light is on, on the motherboard, the problem is NOTHING happens when you press the power button. Not a thing. So I'm not so sure it would make any difference to take out the vid card etc and try to boot up.

the standby light means only that there is power to the board. I had the same thing happen to me with a pentium 3 computer I had I taken it completely apart TWICE and reassembled it TWICE.with no results.it wasnt until I followed the procedure I advised in my first post that I finally got the system working. it may or may not solve your problem but it is precisely what a tech support person would lead you to do if you called them.

I have the same problem, the only difference is that all my gear is brand new. I have flashed the BIOS on the motherboard.

The only thing that i have figuired out that works everytime, is that when it doesnt turn on, i unplug the power, take out the video card, put power back in, and then put the card in. It starts up every go.

When i am in DOS it turns off fine, and turns back on fine aswell, the only thing is when i shut down the computer in windows then try to turn it back on, it dont do anything. Then i have to do the video uplug and plug back in thing.

The computer also turns on everytime with a different video card plugged in, or no video card.

I think it may have something to do with the motherboards advanced power control thingy.

- synick

Hey, just thought i would let you guys know that i have solved the problem, apparently the Motherboard and Video card are incompatible, i only found this out by purchasing a new video card. Although there was nothing listed on the websites. I ended up getting a ATI x700