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D975XBX system won't boot after move to new location

Tags:
  • Motherboards
  • Boot
  • Hard Drives
August 20, 2014 6:26:40 PM

I've got a WHS 2011 system with a D975XBX motherboard, E6700 CPU, 3GB RAM, 5 SATA hard drives and Antec SP500 PSU. It's been working great since I set it up a couple of years ago.

This month I moved one street over, to an identical apartment. When I got my WHS there and hooked it up, it would not boot, no lights, no video, no fans, no drives spinning up. The only sign of life is the standby power light on the mobo right next to the ATX plug comes on. I tried jumping the power switch connector on the mobo with a screwdriver to no effect. I have a little magic black box that claims to know if my PSU is bad, so I connected it and the PSU fan came on and all the lights that were supposed to come on the tester turned on.

I didn't want to have to reinstall WHS and reconfigure my drivespanning and all that junk so I ordered the same model of motherboard from eBay, except when it arrived it wasn't the D975XBX, it was the D975XBX2 which has 4 fewer SATA ports, leaving me short one. I installed it anyway to see if I could get up and running minus one drive, I could always go buy a SATA card. The system tried to boot, but Windows Home Server would fail to start and want me to run a system repair image that I was supposed to make but of course didn't. So faced with the apparent choice of ordering another motherboard and being more careful to get the right model, or buying a SATA controller and reinstalling WHS and reconfiguring stuff, I decided to get another motherboard.

So I went back to eBay and bought another D975XBX and it's exactly the same board. It came with an E6600 CPU. I first installed the new board with my old CPU, same problem. I tried the CPU that came with it. Same problem. So maybe I'm having terrible luck and I got a bum board. I ask the guy to accept the return and I order yet another motherboard. This one comes with an E6750 CPU installed, cooler on it and everything. Same problem.

So the PSU will spin up and come on when I'm using the motherboard that doesn't fit my needs. (Oh, I also disconnected everything and jumped the green to black wires on the PSU and it came on that way too). So the PSU is good? I tried 2 CPUs in one of the D975XBX boards with no change, so it's not the CPU unless they're both bad. From the PSU I'm connecting the ATX24 cable and the 2x4 power connector next to the CPU. What could I be missing, other than my first motherboard and both of it's replacements all coincidentally being bad?

Thanks!

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