Power Up -- Display?

[AdamCassady]

So I'm building (well, recycling some old parts and adding a few new ones) a PC for my girlfriend.

The specs are:

P4 2.8 GHZ Prescott 533 FSB
ASUS P4S800D-X ATX Mobo
2x256 MB 333 Mhz Generic Dell Ram (used these to power up, have a new pair of A-DATA Vitesta DRR 400 2x1GB)
GeForce FX 6600

(various other stuff)

So, I followed the instructions, placed the mobo on its box, etc., and it powered up. Fans were spinning on the VGA and the heatsink, which I consider a victory in itself, considering what I've been through tonight. We got a display once, but I've had a hard time replicating it. Any suggestions? How long should I be shorting the power switch? What do I need to do to keep the display?

[jayb1234]

To start it, just short the switch momentarily. To turn off short it for several seconds untill it shuts down. If you are keeping the switch shorted for several seconds when you try to start up, that could be shutting the machine down before you get to the display.

[AdamCassady]

I have been successful several times in getting a display to pop up, but when I pressed DEL to enter my BIOS, it would not enter. It would ignore the command, seemingly (actually, it said "entering setup", but then nothing would happen), and then pop up a page saying that no SATA drives were detected. Then poof, no display. I tried several times to enter BIOS, didn't work. Now I can't get it to display, at all. I've reset many times. Fans on GPU heatsink and CPU heatsink are working fine, the CPU is getting hot, and the computer seems to be staying on, generally, after I short to power up. But no display. I've made sure that my VGA is in securely, I have reset the CMOS a couple of times, and I've tried it with two different sets of RAM sticks. I was having some success, now nothing. Thoughts?

[Cricket]

What brand power supply are you using?

Do you have an optical drive connected? If you do, have you tried to boot without the optical drive?

:) Cricket

[AdamCassady]

It's whatever 350W PSU that came with my Rosewill case.

[Cricket]

Do you have another compatible power supply you can swap in to test with?

:) Cricket

[chuck4456]

Do you get any life on the screen (at all) when you first power up ? How do you have your hard drives jumpered ??????????

[AdamCassady]

Do you have another compatible power supply you can swap in to test with?

:) Cricket

I will Saturday night, yes. A friend of mine (who services computers for a living) will figure out what's ailing us over pizza and beer. I'll let you know the results.