can you help on the new builds catastrophic failure?

[Spyda]

This is the new build me and my brother were putting together this morning

Asus A7N8X-X Motherboard
AMD Athlon XP 2500+ Barton CPU
CoolerMaster Aero 7 Cooler
512MB Winbond CH-5 PC3200 RAM
Sapphire Radeon 9600 Pro 128MB Graphics Card
WD SE 40GB 7200rpm 8MB buffer HDD.

We had it all together and it booted fine, working from system defaulsts in BIOS, which I checked and made sure they were all right, all correct timngs and speeds selected, then while installing XP, with 39 mins left, it came up with a pagefile error of some sort, i cant remember fully what it said. it said restart and try again, we got this error about 5 times.
So i thought it was RAM, i swapped the RAM around, using them in different order, then with only one stick of each.
We still got the same error each of the 2 times we tried installing XP with the various RAM configurations.

Then on about the 12th time i restarted the PC, it was just dead, it would switch on, the fans would come on and the screen wouldnt, the monitor would not wake up and we just got a long beep, a long pause, a long beep, a long pause, this went on for as long as the computer was switched on.

Figuring that something had gone wrong with a component, i proceeded to take each component and install it on my intel machine, each piece worked flawlessly. This had me very puzzled, so I put it all back together expecting it to work as all the components did in my other PC. Yet again, long beep, long pause etc etc.

What has happened to our new build?!?!?! Im stumped.

Thanks

[ktkendall]

You should have a chart probably near the back in the motherboard manual in the troubleshooting section that gives U the meaning of the various beep codes. Check there to start with...

[Spyda]

the first thing i did was that, it didnt give me anything like that :(, although everything ive looked at says 2 long beeps means memory or video problems, and i tried both different RAM and a different card in, both AGP and PCI, niether worked

[ktkendall]

You may have to resort to the out of the case with bare minimal components troubleshooting guide found here:

http://forum.pcmech.com/showthread.php?s=&threadid=12753

I'm thinking something shorting out behind the MOBO hence the out of the case tip, but if U get there and still no joy than I'm thinking defective MOBO....

[Spyda]

thats what i thought, but it worked, (kind of) for a couple of hours, then died, and i have searched painstakingly and managed to find another person that had a very similar problem to me, and the shop jsu tsaid, you can swap it if you want, so maybe they know something about this board

[foolio]

I had a problem similar to yours with a Soyo Dragon KT400 MOBO. I kept switching around the RAM and Video Card to no avail. I finally took it into a local shop and what seemed like 3 weeks later they had gone through the theories that it was the case, power supply, and finally that the MOBO was simply dead. Cost me about 130 beans to find that out. I acutally ended up using the same MOBO that you are currently having problems with. Once I had all the components switched over the project worked fine...until I tried installing a second HD.

[Spyda]

im on a soltek 75FRN2-L at the moment, just waiting to find out for certain how to lock the PCI bus beofre i OC it to to 3000+ and beyond :D

[shifty]

I've been working on my Soltek all day because of a similar problem.This morning I added another hard drive I bought to see if it functioned ok and when I went to boot it it was dead.No fans,nothing.After checking everything three times I decided to try another power supply.I just connected the atx power plug and nothing else to see if it would start and it did.I shut it off and installed the new ps and when I tried to boot I got nothing.I took that ps out and connected the old one using just the atx connector with the ps out of the case and it started!I put that ps back in and nothing again.So I figured screwing the ps in was maybe flexing the case somewhere an causing a short.I found nothing wrong so I took out the ps,tried it out of the case and it worked again.I took out the board and used washers on all of the standoffs,reinstalled everything and its been running for three hours but I'm still not sure if the problem is solved.I might have to rma the board if I have any more problems.The power supplies are no cheapies either.A 400watt Antec and a 431 watt Enermax.This one"s got me stumped.

[Alienware_Dude]

When you boot with the PSU inside the case, are you plugging PSU leads into HDDs, optical drives, etc.?

[Spyda]

im liking the soltek, got it at 200FSB with 11x multi on default vaults and its cruisin, very nice

[shifty]

Don't mean to get off the subject in Spyda's thread but yes I am plugging in the drives.That shouldn't make any difference as far as the cpu fan and the case fans starting up.I started my own thread on this if you want to answer there.Look at "this one's got me stumped".Thanks

[shifty]

http://forum.pcmech.com/showthread.php?s=&threadid=70375
Sorry about that.

[shifty]

Spyda,what kind of ram are you trying.I'm having problems with Crucial.I had no problems loading windows though.

[Spyda]

im not using the winbond anymore, im now using OCZ PC3200 EL Dual Platinum, lovely