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Alright so my motherboard and processor died on my at the beginning of the week. So I figure it makes for a good excuse to upgrade. I go out and buy a new abit board and an XP 2200+ put it all together..and it won't boot.

I finally figure out that my powersupply is too weak for my new gear. I decide to go buy a new PSU, lookin around it seemed that it would make more sense just to go ahead and buy a new case that came with a power supply. So I put everything together, boot it up...get into windows and everything. I install all the drivers and whatnot. I play demos for Halo and Need for Speed Underground. No problem.

I leave for a bit and come back. Its locked up. I reset it...start playin around again, it locks up again. This time for good. Since then I can't even get a POST. So I got no Post, no video put power seems to be getting to everything. I follow some troubleshooting steps from the motherboard website and take the board out of the case to try and see if the case was grounding the board. Nope..same thing. I take out the video and RAM...same thing. I take off the CPU and heatsink. Same thing. So that leaves the PSU or the motherboard. Right? Should I try to return/exchange one or the other or both??

Check the manual that came with the board for a way to reset your CMOS settings. I think on Abit boards it's a jumper switch. Reset it and try and boot again. If that doesn't work take it back and avoid the headache.

I knew I would forget to mention something. I have reset the cmos a number of times. Even switched batteries with the other board I had to see if that was the problem.

What kind of video card, RAM, and power supply are you using ? Anything less than 300 probably isn't a good idea with an average setup. Also, how many drives do you have in there ? A good sized drive can pull an amp a piece in current. The freezup issue is almost certainly a hardware problem--with heat usually being the culprit. Are you sure your heatsync was installed properly ? Are you using thermal tape, thermal grease, electro thermal cooling, etc ? What kind of ventallation do you have in your case ? How many fans ? What were the average temps of your processor ? Are you certain your CPU fan was plugged in, and are you certain it's spinning at a fast enough rpm (4200+) to cool that chip ?

Thermal diode will cause automatic system shutdown to keep the CPU from getting too hot, however RAM can overheat easily causing the freeze. I prefer Corsair RAM with heatsyncs.

Tim

Vid: 128mb Radeon 9500 pro
Ram: 2 sticks of Crucial 256mb DDR PC2100
PSU: 430w APC(?)
HDs: 80gb Seagate, 10mb Maxtor
CDs: Lite-On CDRW 52x24x52x, Creative Dvd-Rom 5x

First I tried thermal tape but I couldn't get it to boot, so I switched to grease, using a very thin layer. I mounted the heatsync without moving it around on the cpu. I know the CPU fan is plugged in right because it is the only thing on the motherboard that shows its getting power. The temps that the software monitored showed around 38c for the CPU. This is the 3rd motherboard I have installed in my system, and this is the first time I have had any kind of issues with it. So I am just sort of baffled.

When I tried the barebone boot, I took the motherboard out of the case and set it on the cardboard box it came in. The only things I plugged in were ram, video card and cpu...as well as the power supply and wires to turn the system on and the system speaker to work in the case. With only the power supply plugged in I still did not get a POST beep at all.

Your motherboard should at least beep to indicate an error. If your board was shorted, more than likely it would power for a few seconds, turn a fan or two, and then turn off. I'm thinking bad processor... take it back to the store and get a swap. If that doesn't fix it, you have just entered into the bad motherboard RMA cycle of shame.

Tim

Did you try running the board and cpu with one stick of ram? Perhaps one of the sticks of ram is bad. There is a program out there that makes a boot disk to test the memory. I doubt that is the problem, but atleast you can cross that off the list of problems. Then I would check the mobo, take that back to the store. If that does not solve your problems then the cpu.

Yeah, I tried both sticks of ram one at a time. And when the it actually booted up it recognized both sticks.

quick question, did you buy your AMD chip in a retail box? and get an OEM AMD fan? or did you buy and "outofbox" chip and seperate fan? if so whats the name brand of your fan... i'm willing to bet its the chip.. if you take it off again check for discoloration... being that you said u had thermal tape on their and it did'nt boot.. i'm willing to bet it melted that CPU.. only takes 1 second if the heatsink and cpu aren't mated together right using a good thermal compound..

What motherboard is it? I read a while back that there are some problems with early revisions of the nForce2 boards getting certain RAM to work right. If you have an Abit NF7 and its not a rev 2.0 board then I would bet that is your problem. If so I would recommend updating the BIOS and if that doesnt work then return it and get a new one from Newegg. They only sell rev2.0 NF7's.