I’m attempting to assemble my own computer as an upgrade for my old one.
I purchased a Pentium 4, 2.8GHz, 800FSB with Hyperthreading; an AOpen AX4SG-UN motherboard (recommended to me by the guy at the store); some memory (two 256MB DDR, with plans to purchase more later), and a case (a SkyHawk Galaxy – yes, the one with the cheesy blue lights ). I’m planning to scavenge everything else out of my old computer. Most of the drives and cards are upgrades anyway.
I installed the chip and CPU fan in the store, with the tech guy supervising me – for some reason, he’s not supposed to install the chips himself. At home, I put in the memory and installed the board in the case. I read the instruction manual and I think I’ve got all of the switches and LEDs and whatnot connected correctly. The board has an integrated video display, so I connected my monitor to that instead of installing my old video card (but I’ll probably install that eventually; it’s fully DirectX9.0 compatible and has a connector for flat-screen monitors.) I’m planning to use my old hard drive, re-installing Windows if necessary.
Here’s the problem: As soon as I plug in the computer and turn on the power supply (with the switch in the back), the computer turns on without me pushing the main power button. After a few seconds, the computer beeps once, and then powers off. Pushing the main power button has no apparent effect. You have to turn off the computer at the power supply and wait a few seconds for everthing to power down before you can attempt to turn on the computer again. Now, the front-side connectors aren’t keyed, so I’ve tried fiddling around with them, reversing the way they are inserted, etc, but I can’t seem to sort out this problem. Searching AOpen’s website turned up nothing helpful.
The beep sounds like the beep you hear when the compouter starts up normally. Hopefully, this means that there’s nothing wrong with the board or chip themselves. Also, it has occurred to me that the few-seconds of operation is about how long it takes to do a “hard shutdown” by holding down the power button. Could I have a defective power button, or one that is incompatable with my motherboard? Have any Dopers faced a similar problem?
Calling them geeks might not help.
And this may sound dumb, but make sure your power button(the one on the front) is not stuck in, as this would cause the behaviour as described. Make sure it is all the way out and not caught.
Umm. I’m not really a geek, but I’ve rebuilt a couple of machines over the years, and installed Ghu knows how many peripherals ditto. With the caveat that my knowledge may be out of date …
Some very elementary questions:
You already installed the HD in the new machine, and are using it for bootup?
If not, where is it getting its OS??
How long, exactly, is “a few seconds”?
Since the power switch seems to be acting weird, that’s the first thing. Others have already given suggestions on that. However, there’s also a possiblity there’s something wrong with the EPROM, or that the disparity between the equipment installed and what the OS says should be there is telling it “shut down; this is the wrong machine”. I’m assuming you’re using Win XP? In theory, the OS should be reading in the various peripherals, but don’t forget that MS has put a lot of boobytraps into it to help prevent piracy. I’m better at hardware than at software, so I can’t guess what; sorry.
If it were me, I would get an old HD, plug it into the old box as an auxiliary, and reformat (complete with Norton Wipeinfo - or something like that). Then put it in the new machine (not forgetting to change the jumpers or whatever back to tell it it is now the master drive), along with an OS CD (maybe an older one, if you’ve got it hanging around), and see what happens. Reminder: You do not want to wipe the HD from your old machine until you’ve backed up your files. And you’ve got the CDs to reinstall all your software, right?
I powered up the computer as before, and then immediately unplugged the power switch from the MoBo. EUREKA!!! It booted! I then hit the delete key and entered the BIOS screen. I looked around in there and changed the date, but I want to re-read all of the stuff about BIOS before I go changing anything else. Also, it’s getting late.
Tomorrow, I’ll call the store where I bought the equipment and tell them about my problem.
When all of this is sorted out, I’ll add the drives and install Windows and whatnot.
). I’m planning to scavenge everything else out of my old computer. Most of the drives and cards are upgrades anyway.
)
And you’ve got the CDs to reinstall all your software, right?