Cannot start computer

leave a spare mounting post?

hd cables are on fine, no mounting posts left open

Open your case and check if the cpu fan spins when you switch it on.

If it doesn't, check if the power supply fan at the back spins slightly.

If this is the case, it could be your (a) your mainboard, in which case, reset bios using the the battery clear jumper.  And try restarting again.  (b) grab a hold of another power supply and try that on the system.

Mind you ECS are notorious mainboards for random non-booting problem.  Sometimes it's pray and then turn on with these boards.  Once they're up and running they're not much hassles.

Another thing you can try is to remove your video card and reinsert it nice and firmly into the agp slot.  The pins sometimes don't make the connection.

If in doubt, remove the mainboard completely from the case intact with it's cpu and ram.  Then hook up a power supply and on switch then try powering it on.  This will remove the possibility of a bad ground or contact with the metal case stands on circuits.

Good Luck!

Howie: fan spins (both), i'll try another power supply, and resetting the bios, can't remove video card as it is part of the mobo, that's the reason i got this one, would've gotten an AOpen one w/vid but it was sold out

i'll get back

no luck resetting the bios, nor trying another PSU, I will try an even more powerful supply though as the other one was only 5W better

Don't always believe the packaging of the power supply they're usually off by 5-10W either way.  But anyhow a 533 celeron will happily operate on as little as 230watts sometimes less in mini-computers.

If both fans are spinning it's a sign of a mainboard or component problem.  If you have the internal speaker connected it might be able to tell you what's wrong by the beeps.  But sometimes ECSs won't even do that (yeah i know defeats the purpose of having the internal speaker).

One thing you might want to try is Ram.  They're really picky with ram sometimes, I recommend Hynix or a name branded ram with a maximum of 16 chips total from both sides.  Use one ram at a time, and try using a different slots.

Internal video card has it's pluses and minuses I guess.  If you're not big on gaming it's better, but those NForce2 boards are pretty tasty for onboard video.  Anyway sorry i'm getting side tracked.

it's ok, it's not my computer so i'm just making it as identical to the old config as possible

i tries a 350W PSU that i'm using in my athlon 2000, but it wouldn't even start, it starts and turns on the fan for about 1/50th of a second, and it stops, doesn't even turn on the hd or the mobo light or anything, weird

anyway, i'll try switching the ram into a different slot, i'll also try ram from my other computer, i think it has the old pc100

Hi, does the PC beeps once only when you turn it on or beeps continously or doesnt beep at all? The best thing to do is to disconect / pull out all the hardware including internal modems, souncards, network cards, pull out the IDE cables and see if the PC starts if it does then put them one by one back in and repeat...If still doesn't work take your video card out and see if PC boots but gives you a wired Beep and if still doesn't then go as far as taking you Memory out one by one (if more than one) and see if it works...

also try to disconect from power for 1 min and connect power cable back in... and also try resetting the BIOS too... Try any of these and tell me how you went...Cheers

tried most of that....the pc doesn't beep at all in any circumstance, pc speaker is connected fine though so i don't know what it can be, video is on board and i don't see any instructions in the manual on disabling it

...

If you have an AGP slot as well as onboard video, it will search for the onboard AGP/PCI video first, if it cannot find it then it will search for a video card on the AGP slot.

There are options in the bios to disable or have it only look for an added video card (e.g. Primary Graphics Adaptor set to PCI instead of AGP).  But that is the sequence of how the mainboard looks for graphics cards.

If you have an AGP slot as well as onboard video, it will search for the onboard AGP/PCI video first, if it cannot find it then it will search for a video card on the AGP slot.

There are options in the bios to disable or have it only look for an added video card (e.g. Primary Graphics Adaptor set to PCI instead of AGP).  But that is the sequence of how the mainboard looks for graphics cards.

Hi Howie... he can't get in the BIOS i don't think...Can you polesiuk?....

Hi Baz.. yep i realised that.  Just thought i'd make a mention of that incase there wasn't a onboard video disabled jumper (ala SIS Mainboards) on the ECS.  I don't remember there being one but I could be wrong.. it's all in the bios.  If you reset it, then it'll automatically search for an AGP card whether or not you can get into bios or not.

ok :) ...yes he should try putting AGP card in there see what happens...

right, i cant get into bios, as for putting a card in agp slot...well...i don't have an agp slot on this motherboard

at least there's nothing that resembles one

i don't have a pci video card at the time either to try that out

I've done a little research on your board
http://www.ecs.com.tw/products/pd_spec.asp?product_id=105

It appears you do have the same dreaded SIS chipset.  If ram didn't solve your problem and you don't have a pci-vga card handy then the board is the culprit.  I literally had dozens of these boards lying around... all the same problem boot failure.

Where did you purchase this from?  A retailer or second hand?

reatailer...i figured i'd have to take it back, oh well have to find a place that has either the AOpen or Gigabyte ones cause I do need it to have onboard sound/video...
can you maybe recommend any other ones that have both sound/video for a celeron 533?

Any of the 845/815 Intel chipsets are great.  Excellent performers a tad more expensive but rock solid performers.  I've had them in critical server setups and they've had uptimes of six months without reboots.

Some brands that stock them are the MSI, Aopen, Gigabyte.

Via chipset mainboards are also not too bad, driver support is excellent.  I remember the MSI BX-Master board wasn't too bad.

But please avoid SIS chipsets.  What's this for anyway??  A server or a mini-computer of some sort?

just a regular home computer I think, what I originally wanted was the Aopen one that's based off of via chipset (mx36le-un) but not in stock so I had to take whatever was available, i know sis and ecs are both sub-par in their quality (ive had an ecs before), i'll try and find the via one...though it's not that easy finding a 370 board in most comp stores these days

thanks for the help

i'll post back after i've gotten a new board and close this q then ok

Yeah it's really difficult to get a S370 mainboard to suit nowadays.

By the way, do you know if you have a Tualartin Celeron 533 or a non-Tualartin (ie. old PPGA).  If it's a T then this board rocks

http://www.auspcmarket.com.au/index.html?redir=http://www.auspcmarket.com.au/show_product_info.php?code=MB-MS6368L

Hear from ya soon then.

nice board, but I think I have the old non-T CPU (it's 2+ yrs old), I'm at work right now so can't check but is there a way to check if it's a Tualatin cpu?

thanks

looks like i have the Celeron A-PGA PPGA cpu:
http://www.upgradingandrepairingpcs.com/articles/upgrade12_02_03.asp

I have had many situations similar to this. This is what I have done:

A) switch out your video card with another one. If you do not have one.. Loan one from a friend.

B) switch out the power supply.

Usually no diagnostic beeps mean either a bad video card or your CPU is totally OUT or not seated properlly.

If you have an onboard video card.. Just by putting another one in should over-ride the onboard one.

If you just got this motherboard, I would get ready to send it back.

it doesn't have to be onboard vga i guess, i can probably get a card under $50, but i'll see tomorrow when i go to the store to return it, but that's good, it gives me another option...the store I'll return the ECS to doesn't have anything else but theres some other ones nearby so i'll pretty much have to see what they have

well $50 bucks will nearly get a no-brand Geforce 4 mx440.  For a celeron 533 system if you don't plan to upgrade the cpu for a long time yet then a geforce 4 mx440 might be a bit of an overkill as you won't be able to max out it's capabilities.

I've just seen a Geforce 2 MX 64mb go for $32 on Ebay.  Might wanna investigate into getting a hold of one of these babies.

Hi again, it seems as if it isn't the motherboard that is causing the problem as with a different one the issue is exactly the same, the fans/hd, power up, but no initial beeps from the motherboard, and nothing on monitor...

Could it be that the processor is dead?

Thanks
Pete

did they do a diagnosis on the old mainboard?  Yes it could possibly the processor.  But a celeron 533 dead?  Possibility but pretty rare unless it was dropped.  Which mainboard did you get it replaced with?

no, no diag on the old board...sorry, motherboard isn't the ONLY problem is what I meant, the old one didn't turn on at all (it was an old ECS motherboard), so I got a new one, which was a ECS with SiS chipset, on that one the computer turned on, powered on and hd powered on, but got no farther, no beeps even,
then I gave that one back and got an MSI board with VIA chipset, with the same results, ie power turns on, HD turns on, no beeps, no picture on monitor, so I am thinking it is the processor that is bad...what I'll do now (hopefully) is have someone check if that is the case, and if so then i'll buy a new processor

Yeah.. only options left is the processor or a screwed up power suppply.

If I was selling you the motherboard, I would have glady tested the CPU for you. Would be nice if the people you got it from would do the same. ESP when most computer places have CPUs just laying around. That way, they could also sell you the CPU if it worked. (or a power supply).

I had the cpu tested, and it works fine on the motherboard that the store tested it on...i'll still try switching the power supply and ram but other than that i don't know what else to do...

ha, just found out that this motherboard that I have doesn't support the CPU that I have...when I bought it the guy went to the MSI website and looked it up and told me it said that it supports the PPGA 533 Celeron, however I did a little research on it and found out that only older revisions of the board do, not this one...damn

ah i see.  Well that makes sense then. =)

Polesiuk... any updates?

If not could you close this thread.

ok...I got a new motherboard and cpu, installed, ran fine, installed all the drivers that were needed...ran fine a couple times but now it stops during bootup at this line:

SDRAM at DIMM  #   :  1

this happened right after I installed a burner and put in some of the old pci cards, a modem card and a network card...I'll get rid of those and see which piece is causing the problem (assuming any one is) and I'll post back

ok, turns out the LAN card caused the problem, this mobo already has onboard LAN so I guess i don't need it, but I'll have to cut out a hole in the back of the back case cover to accomodate that port

Thanks
Pete

scratch that...it was the modem that caused the problem...wonder why

I've had faulty modems like that before.  Discovery Conexant Modems ... one batch decided to halt all forms of bootage for no apparent reason.

But sometimes a power surge (like the ones that can take out a mainboard) will kill a modem and do exactly that to it.

ditto for me too. I've had weird problems with PCs. Ends up being the modem or NIC... If you want to try something wacky, throw it in another slot and see what happens. I had a PC which would reboot spontaniously for now reason. I moved the network card in another slot(unshared IRQ) and it worked flawlessly ever since.