Tom's Hardware > Forum > Homebuilt Systems > General Homebuilt > Why won't my XP home-built box even get as far as the BIOS?

Why won't my XP home-built box even get as far as the BIOS?

Forum Homebuilt Systems : General Homebuilt - Why won't my XP home-built box even get as far as the BIOS?

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ambush   02-12-2008 at 08:34:22 AM

I just can't get my 3.2Ghz Intel single-core home-made WinXP box to even get as far as loading the BIOS!

Yes, I removed the power cord and then removed the battery for 10 minutes or so and I even shorted out the CMOS reset pins also, but it still will not even load the BIOS.

The BIOS firmware is completely up to date. All cards and peripherals are securely seated. The RAM and CPU seems fine, too.

But while this was working fine a few days ago, there *was* a change, which was that I replaced the AGP-8 VGA video card with a new ATI AGP-8 DVI video card. I'd try changing it back, but I already sold my old VGA monitor so I have no choice but to use the new DVI card.

What happens is that it powers up and then goes into a infinite loop of trying to read the empty CD/DVD ROM drive and failing, over and over again. That being the case, I can't conceive of how a bad video card could be causing this, since if there was a hardware problem so severe it couldn't even show the BIOS, it should be so bad as to stop it from continually trying to read the CD drive, yes?

Any suggestions?


Message edited by ambush on 02-12-2008 at 08:35:03 AM
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ntrepid8   02-12-2008 at 05:17:45 PM
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Is the board POSTing? Do you get a single beep when you power it on?

Did this happen right after you changed the Video Card?

Unplug the CD drive and see what happens.

Did the new video card ever work? Does the new video card have an AUX power plug that needs to be connected? Does the MoBo have and AUX power plug for the graphics that needs to be plugged in?

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ntrepid8   02-12-2008 at 05:20:19 PM
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Can you post a complete system configuration so we can see all the hardware you are running?

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ambush   02-12-2008 at 05:47:43 PM
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Thanks for your replies! A guy on Windows XP Annoyances nailed my dumb problem. It turns out that even though this is an AGP card and AGP cards normally require no additional power supply, this one DID. It never occurred to me that an AGP card would need to be plugged in to my power supply's PCI-Express power cable!

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