Home again now, and thought I'd post my results.... Capacitors: All of them seem fine, with no raising or bending. RAM and graphics card: Reseated, along with all other PCI cards in the system. I also checked the connections on the IDE cables to be certain there's nothing shorting on there too. No joy. So now I'm left with the only possibilities being the PSU, or possibly the board itself - and I'm more inclined to believe it's the board as I did get this as a replacement for an identical board that I was having issues with, although I can't remember what they were (it was a while ago). But just for ease, I'll try and borrow a PSU from a friend to see if that does the trick. Thanks for the help so far :)

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OK well guess again...as much as I had it solved, a few days later I was getting intermittant booting problems where everything would turn on except the hard drive and now video postiing..if I removed the power plug ur reseated it, all would come back and then a few bios hangs etc...couldn't stan it any more so i replaced the cheap 350 watt power supply that came in the case with a used 365 Enermax hanging around in the shop, only this time permanently and it has not happened since...replace the PSU!!! Rich M www.kickenhardware.net

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Spooky timing .... I came to the same conclusion (PSU) after, in a final act of desperation, I unplugged ALL of the IDE devices from the PSU when booting. And guess what? It booted just fine. SO I thought "I know, I'll push my luck...", and added another IDE device back on - it still booted. I then proceeded to add all of the IDE devices back on (power off, of course), and it rebooted each time. So I'm leaning towards an iffy power supply, just like you - seems that when all devices are connected it can't pump out enough power to supply all of them, but if it's been disconnected from them and booted OK, perhaps it stores enough of a charge to "kick" the system up and running again when you reconnect everything. Or it could be that ASRock boards are more picky about the voltage they boot with? I have another old PSU to try temporarily (unsure of the wattage, I forget) but I'll give it a go, and see if it's any improvement - I'll post back :) Glad you got yours working again though!

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ARGH! Ok, I have now replaced the PSU with a slightly better one - it offers more ampage on the +12v line, and seems to be better on almost every line. And it's still dead when I switch it on - well, power LED is on, drives spin up,and that's about it. Whilst I had it open, though, I decided to try a bit more logic. I have two hard drives, a DVD-R drive, and a DVD-ROM drive. If I unplug the power supply to the DVD-R drive, it will boot fine. Every time. If, however, I unplug any of the other IDE devices - the hard drives, the DVD-ROM - instead, then it still refuses to boot. The only way it'll boot is if I take the DVD-R out of the loop. Do DVD-Rs draw more power than DVD-ROMs and Hard Disks? Or is it more likely that it's buggered, and needs replaced? Thinking about it, I've had this DVD-R drive with the last motherboard which also had problems ... hmmm ... What do you think?

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I had that happen with an older Compaq one time where cdrw was crapped out, and the machine would not boot with it plugged in, no matter what I did. Rich M www.kickenhardware.net

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Rich, Well, it's definitely the same case here. I popped out, bought a nice shiny new 16x Philips DVD-RW, popped it in, and it's working fine - it boots as it should, every time. If I stick the same "suspect" DVD-R drive in another machine, however, it causes the same issues - so finally, we get to the bottom of it! You don't know how long this has been bugging me *laughs* It's strange though - I never thought it'd be possible for a DVD-RW drive to hold up the boot process if I'd disconnected the IDE cables, but seems that I'm wrong! For the record, the faulty drive in question's an NEC-2510A, which other than this small problem has been a wonderful device.

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vedekandy, Very Interesting and you tweaked my memory because the cdrw that refused to boot in any pc one day, was a Phillips, first one I had ever touched...good luck!!! And glad you found the problem. I just had a btter one in a home service call where guy hired me to replace a modem. Went in he had box open. I closed it booted up and fired up the modem that worked perfectly. It seems his wife went to print something a day ago and the printer was offline so she reinstalled it. Well that cleared up the 797 error message "modem not found" so she fixed it and never knew it. I kept telling him on the phone a year old Dell could not really have a blown modem so he thinks his wife and I are both "sages" and is completely embarassed. Ok but what on earth did the off line printer have to do with blowing the modem? Possibly because the fax was listed as default printer and the software was not fully set up as they had never used it! Rich M www.kickenhardware.net

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Heh ... it just goes to show, even when you've been dealing with computers for a long time .... things that make no sense still show up to challenge your logic. It's part of what makes computer life so ... interesting ;)

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I had read this forum for a while cause I have the same problem. I have the K7VM3 mobo with low density PC2700 512MB ram (I know it works because it is recognized and runs in my other PC and shows up as 512 PC2700). I have seated it and reseated that and the CPU (nothing is damaged ofcourse). I have even taken all non essential components and just sat it down on a plastic surface...(no case, drives, power buttons, USB stuff, PCI cards...nothing). Barebones with only memory, PSU, monitor, keyboard, mouse. I start it...fans spin everything seems straight...NO POST...I have sent it back to the company after days of research and seeing that I am not the only person with this problem. I also know that the monitor and PSU work because I took them from my main computer (a reliable Sony) and they work when I put them back. So I returned the MOBO CPU combo and should be getting a new one soon...

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I just got the mobo back and it still does not work. I don't know what is wrong. This whole thing is pissing me off. Whatever you do don't purchase your stuff from less know groups like Compu-Terra. There service is difficult because they are'nt toll free and unlike the main companies (CompUSA etc.) if you have repeated problems, your shipping costs will pile up because they don't pay for return shipping. I have only had terrible experiences with these people and will only purchase parts from local stores where I can actually see someone or atleast call someone. Please help me if you know of any solutions to this problem of no postings with AsRock mobos.

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