Help! My Asus PII isn't booting up. I get a steady red HDD light, no beeps. The system doesn't power off with the power button, I can only shut it off with the master power supply switch. I tried the CPU in another pc and it worked fine. I verified that all cables are connected correctly. It doesn't even boot to the Bios. The hard drive sounds like it is spinning. I haven't changed anything. It was working fine before.

had same problem. try reseating the cpu in its slot.wriggle it firmly. if that does not work then remove the mobo and tighten the nuts that hold the cpu bracket. reinsert and try again. I did so and any time I move the computer I have to wriggle the cpu again to get all the connectors to work. good luck!!

try this go to start, run and type msconfig then ok. Go to advanced and untick the disable fast shutdown if it has a tick by it. then see what happeins.

Response to #2: I cannot get the system to turn on to get to the Start button. There is power, but it doesn't boot up, there aren't any beeps, nor does it display anything. There is no signal to the monitor. I have verified that all cables are connected properly. There is a constant red hdd light. I hear the hard drive spinning, and sounds like it wants to start, but nothing happens.

is the sceen black with a flashing _ at the top left side on the screen? if so it sounds like the bios went..POOF!

take the case panel off and see if the cpu fan is turning if it is your bios is ok..then if it is shut it off take that round battery out of the motherboard for a few minites and put it back in and try booting again, see that will reset it to oringial settings and it might bootup.

Response to #4: No, there isn't anything displaying. There is no signal to the monitor. I haven't tried replacing the video card. If my bios went bad, does that mean that I have to replace the mother board?

Response to #4: No, there isn't anything displaying. There is no signal to the monitor. I haven't tried replacing the video card. If my bios went bad, does that mean that I have to replace the mother board?

you would get beeps if the card is bad or not seted well so i dont hink its the card. are you sure the monitor is good? try a friends plug in your tower just to make sure.
also did you check if the cpu an turns by taking off the case cover?

Yes. The monitor is good, I have an HP E-pc connected to it of which I use a Belkin box to share with the clone which is giving the problem. The CPU fan works fine, I tried the CPU with heat sinc in a different machine and had no problems. How can I tell if the BIOS went bye-bye? If so, does that mean that I will have to get a new motherboard? Do you think that it could be a bad IDE cable?

PS.. Thanks for all of the help!

bios is fine it appears power to the fan is very good sign that its giving that function first. whats next if you taken the battery out of that board then that would of reset the board specs to oringinal, now next is why is it not displaying a startup screen.. http://www.pcguide.com/ref/mbsys/bios/boot_Sequence.htm
The BIOS looks for the video card. In particular, it looks for the video card's built in BIOS program and runs it. This BIOS is normally found at location C000h in memory. The system BIOS executes the video card BIOS, which initializes the video card. Most modern cards will display information on the screen about the video card. (This is why on a modern PC you usually see something on the screen about the video card before you see the messages from the system BIOS itself).
The BIOS then looks for other devices' ROMs to see if any of them have BIOSes. Normally, the IDE/ATA hard disk BIOS will be found at C8000h and executed. If any other device BIOSes are found, they are executed as well.//one your video card could be bad, two floppy gone out, three harddrive toast.

http://www.firmware.com/support/oldbios/1010.htm

I agree with the.. first post.

(If you have a slot 1 processor that is)

See if your CPU has come slightly out of it's slot. Those things are heavy, and if you moved it (maybe you did, I dunno!) they can come out of their holders sometimes.

It happened to me before. It would explain absolutely dead machine with power lights on.