Asus A7N8X-VM/400 install problems

[DaveGillespie]

First time poster so hello to all.

Firstly, the spec of the system I am building:

The aforementioned A7N8X-VM/400
Athlon XP2800
2 x Crucial 512 PC2700 Unbuffered
Western Digital Caviar 200gb
NEC 16x DVD writer
Soundblaster Audigy 2 LS
Haupagge PVR-250

Everything is installed and the Hard Drive and DVD Drvies display under the bios as Primary and Secondary master respectively. The memory check succeeds, showing the right amount of memory and 333mhz and the CPU is correctly detected. However, it will not boot at all. I have tried several different floppy boot disks and one bootable CD with varying boot device orders, and have tried to boot with QuickBoot turned off in the bios. When I try to boot, I get a random stream of characters accompanied by constant short beeps.

Any ideas?

 

[RealBlackStuff]

Did you DISable onboard graphics and forgot to put in an AGP card?
Or set AGP first instead of onboard VGA in BIOS?

 

[DaveGillespie]

.

I haven't touched the graphics card settings. I'm getting output to the screen fine, but as soon as I get past POST I get a random stream of characters and continual short beeps.

 

[RealBlackStuff]

What was the last hardware you put in? Recently?
What the last software? Recently?
Did you 'hit' your PC or did it fall over? Cat/dog/baby?

Switch PC off and unplug the mains cord.
Reseat all cards and memory. Check all cable connections throughout the PC.
Check that the cooler is properly connected to the CPU, that the fan(s) spin, and are not dusty.

 

[DaveGillespie]

Firstly, the spec of the system I am building:

It's a new build PC, so it hasn't been hit/fell over/cat/dog/baby/etc.

Will get a chance to check seating of cards/memory etc. later.

 

[RealBlackStuff]

Oops, missed that.
Did you apply thermal compound between CPU and cooler? If not, you'd get immediate overheating and the mobo switches off!
Try with a minimal system, only mobo, 1 stick memory, you should then be able to boot into BIOS with those onboard graphics.
Activate 48-bit LBA in BIOS (if there) to support that big HD.
Then add 2nd memory, reboot.
Then add 1 item and reboot every time.
Try this sequence: HD-boot, DVD-boot, install OS-boot, Audigy-boot, tuner-boot.