just finished assembling my first from scratch machine. Celeron tualatin 1 Ghz, P6VEM motherboard, 512MB PC2100. Need troubleshooting suggestions. When it is turned on, it makes computer noises and mouse and KB lights flash but nothing shows on monitor at all - no signal. power and HDD LED don't come on.

Are you sure everything is connected correctly? IDE cables aren't flipped the wrong way? HDD & CD-ROM setup accordingly to either master or slave? Do you get any beeps when it is turned on? Can you get into the BIOS? If so, did you check your settings...for instance, is your Primary Display set to either PCI or AGP (depending on which you have)?

no beeps - all IDE cables look right. Drives look right too - lights flash on power up . motherboard has onboard graphics. tried 3 monitors - none find a signal. Floppy and CDROM both seem to be trying to work.

I'd suggest disconnecting everything to eliminate any possible hardware problem. Disconnect the HDD, CD-ROM, floppy (both the ribbon cables & the power)...remove any addon cards (modem, sound, network card, etc). Then try booting up with just the video, memory, keyboard & mouse attached. If it boots up, go directly into the BIOS & adjust the settings as necessary. Save the settings, reboot & shutdown immediately. Then start adding things. Don't put everything back at once or you may end up right where you started.

This sounds very similar to what happened to me. Take out everything except mobo, chip, and video card. You dont even need hard drive to get monitor to turn on. Power it up. Do all of the fans turn on? Does it beep at all? On mine some things would turn on but the monitor did not turn on and it did not beep. I found out the mobo was fried so I got a new one and it works. My advice is to replace the mobo.

Disconnected everything and tried it - no beeps, no monitor signal. Ordering new motherboard. I don't know how I could have toasted it. Hopefully it will work. Thanks for the help - look for me back here if it doesn't :-)

on a new board u may have to change a jumper near the battery its three prongs sticking up with a two prong jumper. with power off move it too the other setting and mybe move it back again after a short delay. I noticed it done once and was told it has to be done. it resets the cmos