much help needed...

ThatFatCat5

I recently bought a barebones set from newegg

I was have a lot of problems with it at first, installing windows and all, but it ended up working in the end. (the installation that is)
so after it's installed, I start booting windows, it shows the windows load screen, then flashes a blue screen and restarts. It didn't give me options besides safe mode and last working defaults, which all ended with the same result. So I decided to try and reinstall windows again, but I was going to put windows xp home on it instead of pro (you don't need to know why), and in the process I moved the computer to a different room. however, when I plugged the computer in and turned it on, it didn't beep, the fans were spinning, but it didn't beep and nothing showed on the monitor. So I replaced the power supply and I got the same thing. I know the processor is fine and the ram is good too, so I think the motherboard may have broken when I plugged in the computer or something.

So after reading that, I have a few questions...
Is my motherboard really the cause for these problems?
Is there anything I can try to further diagnose or fix the motherboard?
If the motherboard is broken, I need a quality one for under $80 that has an LGA775 socket, supports DDR400 ram, supports 800MHz FSB cpus and has an agp 8x graphics slot.
Are there any brand names I should swing towards or any models that anyone has had good experience with?
Last, is there anyway I can return the barebones if the motherboard fried without physical damage? (meaning electrical damage) or can I get it replaced? neweggs policy says that its standard warranty is void upon physical damage, so does that mean I can't get a replacement under these circumstances?

I really need everyones help, this isn't even a computer for me, it's for a friend and he's already paid $499 on this system, and it's not working!

Thank you all so much in advance

All of the system specs:
P4 2.8GHz 800MHz FSB HT
1GB (2x512MB) Corsair valueram ddr400
chaintech geforce 6600 256MB 8x
barebones listed above
2HDD's and 1 CD-Drive

If I missed any essential information please tell me

jradmin

You posted a qustion to us a short time ago about using this barebones with this setup and were advised against it. Let me reiterate why we said dont get it.

The power supply is a whoppin 250 Watts.

Whats that mean? It means that you dont have enough power to light up a christmas tree bulb in that system. Your running medium grade parts, not low in crap and you need power to push em. That P4 prescott chip alone eats up enough of that power supply to keep the rest of the system from working.

You need at the minium a GOOD...let me say it once more...GOOD 400 Watt PSU. My advice is grab an antek PSU. If you dont wanna get a good PSU then get some crappy 550 Watt PSU and that should push it well.

ThatFatCat5

so are you suggesting I get a new psu and motherboard? because the 250W psu still works fine, and I have a good 400W psu i can put in the system.

Or are you saying that the motherboard just doesn't have enough power? because it still didn't work with the 400W powersupply and both HDD's, the cd-drive and gfx card unplugged.

I still believe the motherboard is busted, the powersupply will work fine in my system (stated in the other post) that currently has this 400W psu, so swapping is possible after I get a new motherboard.

so do you have a suggestion for a new motherboard? for it to work with this case it has to be microATX as well...

one last question (trying not to distract from the first questions), but would a low wattage psu like that have the ability to actually ruin the motherboard?

thanks

btw, how do these look?
1
2
3

profdlp

ThatFatCat5 wrote:

so are you suggesting I get a new psu and motherboard? because the 250W psu still works fine, and I have a good 400W psu i can put in the system...

Try the 400W PSU and see if the situation improves.

It's usually a mistake to change more than one thing at a time when you're having trouble - how will you know which one was the culprit?

jradmin gave you some good advice - that 250W PSU just ain't going to cut it.

ThatFatCat5

I guess I forgot to mention, I did try the 400W power supply and I got the same result. Also, do any of the motherboards in my previous post "cut-it"?

thanks profdlp

profdlp

I'd pick MSI over Chaintech or Gigabyte every time.

Have you run Memtest86? No sense in spending any money until you're sure where the problem lies.

jradmin

Gigabyte and chaintech are ok if you dont really care whats in your system...you just want it to run.

Are you hearing any beeps when you start the machine up? Also, can you atleast get to a POST screen?

Go ahead and try switching out each stick of RAM once you have the 400 Watt PSU plugged in. If it still doesnt boot up then it is possiable the mobo is bad. If you want to stay cheap and somewhat solid, I would advise Asrock. Never had one break bad on me yet in 4 years of building cheapo machines for people.

I really think 400 Watts is the absolute low limit I would ever run in a P4 E system that uses a Nvidia 6 series card, and it would need to be reliable like Antek or OCZ before I would consider it.

ThatFatCat5

it doesn't even display any video, with the integrated graphics or the geforce 6600, so no POST screen, and yeah, no beeps
lol, profdlp, when I woke up this morning I was thinking to myself, "I should run memtest!" and then it wouldn't do anything except spin up the drives and run the fans.

i'll try each stick of ram and the 400w psu and then i'll get back to you guys

profdlp

You might try resetting the CMOS (BIOS), too.

Good luck, man.

ThatFatCat5

no luck with each stick, i tried no sticks as well and received no beeps or anything. clearing the cmos didn't seem to do anything either. and this is all with the 400w psu. the hard drive light will stay on for about 15 seconds and then turn off, it did that during all of the memory configurations.
any other tests?

TheBaron

I just want to throw in -- it sounds like you're leaning towards a new mobo, but you're still going to need a new PSU as well. it may work in the short term, but I can't image that POS lasting for more than a month, and that would be a very iffy month

ThatFatCat5

the 400w not lasting a month?
eek, if that's the case i'm gonna start losing money from making this computer for him

profdlp

I think he meant the 250W PSU. A 400W model should be alright.

ThatFatCat5

phew, so is it looking like the mobo to everyone else?
that 400w has been very reliable for me, even under overclocking and such it's held nice voltages.

ryko

you know what...you don't listen.

in your first post a few days ago on "what to buy" you asked for suggestions and then didn't even wait for enough replies before you went out and purchased this piece of junk barebones and wasted your friends money.

then when we all told you that the 250w isn't going to cut it, you still didn't listen and tried it anyway. your proabably fried the mobo right there.

next when we tell you bare minimum is a QUALITY 400w, you insist that your 400w doesn't work either. is it quality? antec, enermax, TIGI, etc...

another thing is that you originally had a $500 budget which you are now going to go over when you buy a new replacement mobo. you should have listened to us the first time and spent a little over $500 for QUALITY components and you wouldn't be in this situation.

i don't feel sorry for you at all. you didn't listen to any of us in the first post on this subject, so why would you be any different now? :shakehead

ThatFatCat5

both of the power supplies are still working, i'm running the 250w with my old system now and it's running fine. the 400w still works, it just doesn't fix the problem that I am having right now
the 250w was also running the computer fine until i moved it and plugged it in somewhere else.
so wouldn't the psu break if it was pushed to its max? or would it just take out all parts but itself? I never encountered a moment where I had it running and it shutoff, and never worked again, it was from shutting it off, after 6 hours of it working, moving it to another room, and then it didn't work anymore. could plugging into the other outlet have caused some spark/jolt or something that fried the mobo?

ryko: if you don't want to help, then don't say anything, please

jradmin

Not unless the voltage in your house was ustable and someone turned on a heavy load item at the same time you flipped the on switch. Highly unlikley.


Ryko is right though. Dont come asking for advise if your not going to atleast consider it. Thats just wasting our time and your money. Next time you ask for advice I hope you actually consider it.

At this point I'd get a new mobo and PSU.

Armo

I woruld RMA the whole barebone, but that could take weeks

profdlp

Guys, I think he's probably learned a great deal from this experience. Let's not pile on too hard with the "I told you so" comments. We've all goofed at times.

Armo wrote:

I would RMA the whole barebone, but that could take weeks

Is that an option for you, ThatFatCat5? It might keep you from getting totally hosed on the deal. Make sure it's clear who is paying for the shipping to return it, though. Otherwise you probably might as well go with that $50 MSI MB.

jradmin

Sorry about being so mean about it. Just kinda annoying when you can already forsee something bad happening and it does because they didnt take the right path.

Anyhow, we live and learn. I made hella bad decisions with comps...like using a Cyrix chip in my first build back in 98.

airbornflght

Well i have to agreee that he needs to listen a little better but maybe he didnt know to get good componets.

And whats this about gigabyte boards arent very good, I have a k8ns pro board and its been awesome. never crashed or had the least bit of instability and has great overclocking utilities. As far as i know gigiabyte is a good brand, not like i went out and bought a $30 socket 754 mobo, i think when i bought the mother board it was above $100

ThatFatCat5

thank you guys so much, I really have learned my lesson
so what is an RMA? I thought I couldn't return the item if it had physical damage. is it like returning it to the manufacturer?

my client's deal was that if I made this computer for him he would pay an extra $100 to give to me, so my plan is to take out of the fund he was going to pay me to fix this whole situation. but if I have the ability to return the barebones that would be a very good thing, however, he's sortof short on time because he is going back to college in about 3 weeks.

i think my best route is to get a new mobo then. also, in the manual for the video card it says that it is only important to plug the videocard into the molex (sp?) connector if it's a 6600G, soooo should I not plug the 6600 in even if it has a connector? (I hope that didn't ruin the mobo somehow)

so anyway, MSI or Gigabyte?

airbornflght

if you order your stuff off of newegg you can do an rma (return merchandise aplication) to return defective products. But it takes quite some time and you have to pay the shipping to get it there.

Which wouldnt be a bad deal in your case. So as long as there isnt and physical, or should i say visible damage to the product or if it is not easily noticable you might be able to return it for a refund.

If you can i would return the crap parts and buy good ones, do it right the second time.

Yes, you should plug the video card in!!!! Thats how it gets its power, the agp bus doesnt carry enough power for that card. There are two things that i think maybe wrong with your computer, they may both be wrong (i think they are)

1. is the power supply, you can simply not scimp on them now days, I would go with antec, ocz, or enermax

2 is the motherboard, it may have a bad agp slot/bus or you may have fried the entire mobo.


Hope you get this sorted out and hope you learned something from this experience, cause i wise man makes mistakes and learns from them. A stupid man makes them over and over.

ThatFatCat5

ok, I'll seriously consider the RMA
but, do you think I should try reseating the motherboard? I never had to put it in because it came installed but could have come up from pushing the heatsink in and causing it to short out on the case or something? i guess it's worth a try, otherwise, I'll talk to the person I'm building this for whether he wants to do an RMA or not.

Thanks

profdlp

Try the system outside the case with just the bare minimum of parts installed. Also, try sticking the ram in one of your computers (one stick at a time) and run memtest there.

If it comes down to an RMA, your customer should pay at least half of the shipping, if not all of it. Unfortunately, if you haven't discussed this type of thing beforehand you might find yourself over a barrel. Whenever possible I try to get my customers to order their own parts; I also make it clear that if something shows up D.O.A. it is between them and the place they bought it from. Most small computer shops you see are glad to sell replacement parts for repair work, invariably at a hefty premium. I've found as a little guy working on my own that no matter what the markup I could charge for parts, it's just not worth the hassles when something goes wrong. Your situation is a perfect example of why this is true. Your guy expected to have a working computer by now. It doesn't matter that the stuff you ordered arrived screwed up through no fault of your own (other than the fact that you went with stuff of dubious quality to begin with, but we've covered that pretty well by now), your customer expects you to fix it - and fix it now. Unless you have a large enough operation that you can afford to stock spares (risky in the fast-changing world of hardware), you inevitably suffer a double delay getting a replacement. First you have to wait for it to be shipped back to the retailer, then wait for the stuff to come back (and pray it works this time...).

Don't let yourself get too down about it, though. The next time you have an opportunity to make some easy (!) money building a system for someone you will be much wiser, and far better prepared to make it a truly profitable endeavor. I am sure that you are a lot wiser now than you were a week ago.

ThatFatCat5

profdlp, you truly are a saint
though I do not have it working yet I greatly appreciate all of your help and the help of others. I think the safer way for me to go would be building computers and then selling them

with this motherboard, during the XP installation I was getting errors about windows not being able to install devices labeled "CD-ROM" and "System", then after the installation was over it didn't work. could the mobo have been defective from the start? or is that something common to see if the chipset or other parts on the mobo aren't recognized as registered parts (or w/e) with windows; and later on it would be fixed by installing the drivers via CD?

If I get the part RMA'd, and it comes back and windows still doesn't work I don't know what I'll do

profdlp

ThatFatCat5 wrote:

profdlp, you truly are a saint...

My mother thinks so, too.

...during the XP installation I was getting errors about windows not being able to install devices labeled "CD-ROM" and "System", then after the installation was over it didn't work. could the mobo have been defective from the start? or is that something common to see if the chipset or other parts on the mobo aren't recognized as registered parts (or w/e) with windows; and later on it would be fixed by installing the drivers via CD?...

It could have been any of those things. Here's a couple more things to check:

1) Make sure all your drives are jumpered correctly. The Master drive goes at the end of the cable.

2) Make sure the CD you're installing from is not smudged or scratched. Many times when Windows can't install something it's merely because it can't read the CD to copy the drivers from.

3) If you have a 3rd party controller on the board (like a RAID controller, or SATA controller) look for the point at the beginning of the Windows installation where it says "Press F6 to install 3rd Party drivers...", then use the disc which came with the MB.

4) Can you see far enough into the process to check the date of the BIOS? The problem you describe could possibly be fixed as easily as flashing to a later version. If things scroll by too fast to read it all, press the Pause key to freeze the screen, then copy down all the numbers.

5) You might also try a reinstall with everything on the MB cranked down to low-performance settings.

If I get the part RMA'd, and it comes back and windows still doesn't work I don't know what I'll do

At that point, I would try to exchange it for something else or simply cut my losses by going with the $50 MSI board you mentioned before. If you have the cash, see what the return policy is on the MB (restocking fee, etc), then order one at the same time you RMA the barebones system. If the new barebones works, return the MB and get your money back. If not, you'll have a board handy to get your guy up and running before he heads back to college. If they're going to charge something like $25 as a restocking fee you might as well go ahead and just order the MB. By the time you paid that and the shipping for the barebones RMA you'll be out $50 anyway.

Good luck.

ThatFatCat5

I would like to thank everyone that helped. That MSI mobo and my 400w PSU surely did the trick. It runs like a beast (well, probably not by your standards, but mine atleast).

I certainly have learned a very important lesson. And major thanks goes to profdlp, his optimism and advice definately helped me through this.

Thanks everyone!