Need Help for Friend

[The Kraut]

My friend just bought parts to build his own computer:
Lian Li PC-65B Black Aluminum ATX Mid Tower Computer Case

Evga Geforce 7800GT Video Card

DFI LANPARTY nF4 SLI-DR Socket 939 NVIDIA nForce4 SLI ATX AMD Motherboard - Retail

OCZ 2GB (2 x 1GB) 184-Pin DDR SDRAM DDR 400 (PC 3200) Unbuffered Dual Channel Platinum System Memory Mode

AMD Opteron 148 Venus 1GHz FSB Socket 939 Processor

Creative Sound Blaster Wi-Fi

OCZ PowerStream OCZ520ADJSLI ATX, BTX, SATA, P4 and EPS12V 520W Power Supply

ASPIRE CF12SL-UBL 120mm Blue LED Light Cooling Fan x2

Western Digital Caviar SE16 250GB 3.5" SATA 3.0Gb/s Hard Drive

ZALMAN CNPS7000B-Cu LED 2 Ball Blue LED Light Cooling Fan

Arctic Silver 5 Thermal Compound

I have not seen it yet, and they are trying to get as much help as possible. They say they have everything set up right because the diagnostic lights on the DFI light up and everything. It will power up but nothing comes on the monitor. Everything was set up correctly (they say so at least) but just doesnt work. Do you guys have any ideas or suggestions i could tell them? I will respond as soon with any updates. Thanx

 

[Ste]

Its most likly a grounding issue.

have them take the motherboard out of case, Unattach everything buy CPU, RAM and VIdeo card, Place the motherboard on a hard surface: such as a wooden table, Anything BUT carpet.

Have them try and boot it up, If it POSTs succesively, have them put it back in the case and try booting it up.

 

[Nitestick]

check gfx card has power cable plugged in, and is secured correctly. make sure the monitor is plugged in properly.

 

[The Kraut]

Thanks for the fast reply.

The graphics card is plugged in correctly and secured. They checked to see if the monitor works on another computer and it did sot they hooked it back up. I will tell them to remove everything like you said Ste and post back with more info. I guess they had everything plugged in at once and then tried to start but im not sure. Could this be the problem?

 

[sPlAtOiD]

Ive read some problems about PCI-x video cards and how the windows install doesnt recognize PCI and you have to use the F6
upon install to use this card.Im not real sure about this but i think i read it here somewhere. I'll check and get back to ya...

 

[Nitestick]

the thing is their is no video during post, therefore it is hardware not software. check if the board has integrated graphics, if it does try them, disable them and try the card again. trying the card in another comp would help as well.

 

[The Kraut]

OK, they managed to get it to start by connecting the p-4 auxillary power connecter. It starts but stops at the bios screen where it says "verifying DMI pool data". They were able to porceed once to the windows setup screen but then it froze. I am starting to doubt they ever even read about how to build a computer....

 

[The Kraut]

This is ridiculous, first i help him with his computer, then i come on here and ask everyone here for help and then i find him a link to a list that tells exactly how to build a computer using a dfi board. All he has to say after I showed him this list is "thats a pain in the ass". What kind of a response is that! I just helped him and it seems like he doesnt need my help or anyone others and im willing to bet that he did something wrong too.

 

[RockyZ]

Plug everything in, reset CMOS, and reboot.

 

[The Kraut]

Now it will let him install a partition of windows and then when he rebooted it wouldnt boot with the OS and is running a partition. It wil also not detect the hdd in bios. Could this be something do to the hdd being SATA II?