ASUS A7S-VM Won't Boot

[Guest]

This is probably about my 10th system. I don't know all there is to know, but i certainly know what i'm doing. Got nothing but CPU (Duron 800) and RAM (256MB NEC PC133) plugged into the motherboard. It's an integrated board, so video is built in. ATX power connector plugged up and power switch in place. Power cord plugged into outlet and power supply. Monitor cable plugged into video out on mobo and monitor turned on.

When i hit the power switch the p/s fan and cpu fan whirr into life, but NOTHING else happens. I tried plugging the case speaker in, no beeps. NOTHING appears on monitor. I can't turn it off with power switch, even holding it down for ten seconds. I have to turn it off with the hard switch on the p/s.

I changed out the cpu and ram with known good components and exact same result. I have unquestionably isolated this to the motherboard. Any ideas?

Anyone used this board and know of some setting i've overlooked? I've played around with all the jumpers, including clearing the CMOS several times. I'm at a loss and under a time limit.

I tried emailing ASUS tech support but recieved a form letter in return (in broken English no less) that made it obvious the guy hadn't even read my email. The reseller i purchased the board from doesn't answer the phone, and they're located across the country from me.

Any help is greatly appreciated.


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Wherever you may be, there you are.

 

[Guest]

its a good possibility that your motherboard is grounded to your case, which would cause it to short out and not boot. Make sure there are no loose wires laying against the motherboard and that there are no case mounting brackets touching the underside of the mobo that shouldnt be. One way to test this is to take the mobo out of the case and lay it on a piece of anti-static plastic. hook the power connector to it and try to boot.....

good luck

ignore everything i say

 

[Guest]

I considered this, and have checked, but it's possible i could still be missing something. I messed with it for a long time forgetting that there were two mounting brackets that i thought were going to line up with holes on the mobo which didn't. I didn't notice that they didn't line up until i had almost entirely finished screwing the mobo into the case. I'm so absent-minded i didn't think about that being a bad thing at first and went right on with assembling the machine. After a couple of days (with very limited time to work on it either day) of tinkering, this evening i decided to unscrew the mobo from the case and try booting it. While undoing the screws it hit me like a ton of bricks that the mounting brackets shouldn't be touching the board in places other than the screw holes. I pulled the board out, set it on a piece of cardboard i had next to me and then tried booting it again. Same result. Discarded the carboard and held the mobo up in the air by a corner with nothing but a screw hole and still had the same result.

Could i have damaged the board by having those mounting brackets touching the bottom of it during so much of my tinkering? If i HAD damaged the board, do you think it even would get as far as it does, with the fans coming on?

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Wherever you may be, there you are.

 

[jlanka]

My semi-educated GUESS would be that the board was not damaged. I could be wrong, of course.

The other thing that hits me is something from another post here I read yesterday. Maybe something in the BIOS is preventing it from POSTing. Try to clear it out, either by jumping it, removing the battery for a day (?), or some boards (my ABIT for instance) will boot with default BIOS settings by holding down the insert key during powerup. I know you've never actually had the thing working which would imply that the BIOS should be at default already, but what the heck? You've got nothing to lose. Check my signature ;-)



<i>It's always the one thing you never suspected.</i>