New home built PC issue

[Wish-I-Were-Fishn]

Just finished putting a new PC together, but it won't run. When you hit the switch the fans spin and the LED's come on the motherboard for just a brief second. It then shuts down for another brief moment then tries to start again. It keeps repeating this cycle over and over.

I bought the parts at Micro Center and paid to have them install the CPU and memory on the motherboard and do a post test, so I know it worked at that point.

Any ideas? Bad power supply? I have disconnected everything except the switch and power supply.

[SkunkedAgain]

It's been a year since I built my last one and quite a few since I really had any issues to diagnose, but my first thought would be that the power supply isn't powerful enough to support everything. That should be a pretty easy verification of watts though.

My next thought would be to check the motherboard manual (or HSOforum) for troubleshooting issues. Is it beeping at all?

First of all, make sure that you are grounding yourself before touching any of the parts. Static electricity kills hardware. Then try unseating all components and reseating them. Leave the processor alone unless you have additional heat grease

[Nick Kuhn]

There should be a section in the manual for beep codes or other sorts of error checking. That should help you narrow down the problem.

[Wish-I-Were-Fishn]

No beeps

[upnorth]

Seen high end video cards do that if the power is just not there to power them.

[Moose]

Do you have it hooked up to a monitor and keyboard? Does it let you into the bios maybe a setting in there if it will let u into it.My Gateway runs through bios so fast unless I need to be into it the machine would shut down before I could react to it.

[MN Mike]

Sticky or faulty power button??? otherwise a power supply is a good place to start.

Mike

[MuleShack]

Seen high end video cards do that if the power is just not there to power them.

Mine did this when I had the video card on the mother board but didn't have all 14 pins from the power supply hooked up. I removed the video card to see if it would fire and it did.

I had to update the bios and then reinstalled the video card with both plugs from the power supply and then it fired off right.

[SkunkedAgain]

What kind of power supply did you install. Is it the cheapy, stock one that came with the case or did you spec one out? I'm really starting to think that's your problem. Is this a powerful system that you built?

[Wish-I-Were-Fishn]

I have everything disconnected. No video card installed. No keyboard, or monitor hooked up either.

[Shack]

Have you connected the case's front switches and LEDs (the power/reset switch and LED, as well as the audio and USB ports) to the motherboard? If so are the wires connected correctly?

If this is correct then check to see if there are any jumpers that need to switched around upon prior to first power up. If not then talk to Micro Center and possible bad power supply.

[masoct3]

On your motherboard is a CMOS chip. It is a circular battery. If you take that out, it will default everything as if it is new. Please post your results on that.

[Surface Tension]

Hook the keyboard and monitor up. If you don't have the monitor hooked up how are you going to see any errors or get into the bios setup?

No keyboard is an error.

Look at the back of the puter next to the power plug. There is a 110 and 220 volt switch, make sure its set to 110.

If no go after that, as said remove the battery but look in the motherboard manual for the jumper to reset the cmos.

When you get into the bios you'll have "Hault On" select no errors.

[upnorth]

If it just keeps going through the boot cycle you more than likely have a piece of bad hardware. Disconnect all the drives and pull the memory, any bad hardware will cause it to just keep cycling, you might pull the CPU also.

If that fails, I think you are at a point you would be best getting on the horn with the people you bought the equipment from.

[Kyhl]

Hook the keyboard and monitor up. If you don't have the monitor hooked up how are you going to see any errors or get into the bios setup?

No keyboard is an error.

Look at the back of the puter next to the power plug. There is a 110 and 220 volt switch, make sure its set to 110.

If no go after that, as said remove the battery but look in the motherboard manual for the jumper to reset the cmos.

When you get into the bios you'll have "Hault On" select no errors.

This.

Keyboards used to be manditory for a boot. Been a while since I've built one so I don't know if it is still true. Hook up the keyboard and try it again.

Leave the video card out and use the MB video. You may have to set a jumper to add a video card. The wrong jumper setting will confuse it and cause a crash when both on board video and a separate card try to run at the same time.

[Shack]

Also the name/model/specs of the motherboard and PSU would help also are the standoffs on? You need the MoBo grounded and also sounds as if it a test-out ground issue. Also look if you have a bent PCU pin. Just checking but is the CPU seated correctly and if you want just double check if the RAM is installed and seated correctly.

[fishnowworknever]

Re-seat the memory,,make sure they are in the correct dimm slots.

try just one stick in dimm 1, if that doesn't work try the other mem stick in dimm 1.

post ur results.

[Wish-I-Were-Fishn]

Update: I brought my other pc to work to swap out the power supply with the new one that was suspect. When my son went went to disconnect it, he noticed there are two connectors on the mb, not just the big one. He felt real silly, but it was worth a good laugh. Problem solved

[masoct3]

Yup, 20+4

[Invader440]

Yup, the other connector is your 12v that mainly supplies the CPU. If you don't have it connected the computer won't start.