Need Help Getting To New Build To Work

Hi I'm a first time poster and PC builder. I bought some parts and I'm not sure how to get them working correctly. I bought an Asus a7nx8-e motherboard, amd athlon Xp 2.2 ghz, 1gb corsair ddr ram, a diablotec 400w psu, and an ATI radeon x1600 pro agp.

I bought all these parts used locally. The mobo, ram, and cpu came together from an IT guy who recently upgraded for 30 bux. I bought the psu from another IT guy for 20 bux. The video card was bought from a guy who just used his computer for games.

The harddrive I use is a 20 gig and is already preloaded with windows XP and working fine because I took it out of my old computer.

So I did what any first time builder, installed all the parts into my old tower, made sure everything fit, plugged everything to the appropriate slots, and hooked up the power switch.

All the parts booted up fine, mobo, video card, and psu, but I see nothing on my monitor. What do I do next?

 

First, welcome to Comptuer Help Forums!

Just a quick middle of the night question but does the MOBO have a built in graphics card as well. (I ain't googleing at 2:45 ) and, if so, have you tried switching the monitor to it?

How do you know this?

 

First of all - the HDD that you took out of your old PC will need to be formatted and then the OS installed again as the hardware is totally different and would give you BSOD even if it did boot up.
when you say nothing happens - does nothing happen as in you press the switch and nothing happens or you press the switch and the fans turn etc, but nothing else.

 

The fans for the vid card and cpu both start up fine because their fans start whirling once its booted up. Also the mobo has a light that comes on. The mobo doesn't have integrated video.

I'm beginning to think this is a video card issue because I do not get any video whatsoever wjen its booted up.

 

What I meant was I press the switch, everything turns on, but no video output to the monitor. Not even boot up screens for bios and such just black.

I've looked at google for solution and the closest thing I cAme to finding was the possibility that the agp isn't giving enough power the video card.

 

Hi Jpeero

Is the PC posting?

and have you reset the CMOS on the Motherboard?

 

I have not reset the CMOS and I cant be sure if it is posting because there is no video. I was just over at the ASUS tech forums for motherboards and basicilly it said it was a video card problem. Im going to try and find a friend who has an agp computer that works fine and bring over this card to test.

 

jpeero,

You have not indicated whether you reformatted the drive/re-installed the OS.
This is the first step which you must take before any other.

 

Is a hardrive needed to view post screens though?

 

I've never tried to find out if this is true or not.

I imagine your objective is a fully functional system.

In which case you must reformat the drive/reinstall the OS.


I'm out of time now. Will pick this up later.

 

OK, POST, Power on self test, If all is well you will get a "beep" then your monitor should turn on and you will see the Bios screens if all is not well you will get a series of "Beeps" some short some long sort of like the motherboard trying to talk in Morse code through a little pezo speaker that it should have attached

CMOS, the Motherboard you are using is from another system so the CMOS and Bois will be configured for that system, and will be looking for everything that was plugged into it, sometimes you get lucky and it will sort it self out, but experience has taught me that it's better to just reset it.

Hard drive with Windows on it, what you will find is when you get the monitor to work that it will boot to a BSOD, but I think we need to get past the question of does it POST first

 

Update:

Took the GPU and Motherboard to a friends to test to make sure they worked properly and in unison and they passed. There was no hard drive hooked up and all we got was post screens. So i took it home, repeated the test and the motherboard, RAM, CPU, GPU, and all fans worked correctly but when I put it into its case it did not work. After a little troubleshooting I discovered there was a small short happening with case and I moved it into a new case.

After being moved to a new case it now will boot up fine with the post screens. I installed the hard drive into it and booted it up, and it will try to get the windows loading screen, but will reset before it can get there.

So, I have a new problem now, what is the best way to get it to stop resetting before it gets to the windows loading screen?

I will not be able to install any new OS's today or reformat because the hard drive I'm using now is the only one I have and I also do not have CD's or a burner. Not to mention I'm strapped for cash and won't be able to buy anything for a little while.

How do I reset the CMOS?

and what is a BSOD?

 

Alright thanks a bunch, after all this im just happy the hardware works. Ill update this thread tomorrow if this works or not.