i recently built a new rig for myself, and all is well (it was the first one i built)
i ordered the same exact pc for a friend and put it together, upon turning it on it would not power up, it was a faulty psu, i replaced it and everything powers up, but no signal is running to the monitor i checked my connection 3 and 4 times, optical drive opens and closes, i can hear the hdd working, but i can't see anything on the monitor so i can't install os etc.. i'm thinking it's either a bad mobo or vid card, plz help

oh and btw since i forgot to post it, the mobo is an asus a8n sli deluxe and vid card is leadtek 6800 gt 256 pci-e also 1 gig of
corsair pc 3200 ddr 400 ram (x 2 512 sticks
dual channel)

Not sure if this will work, but is the switch on the PSU switched to 115 instead of 220? Is the Video card seated firmly?

May God bless everyone along the Gulf Coast trying to recover from Katrina. But let this be a lesson for America to turn back to God. We have forgotten Him by turning to drugs, sex, and other stuff.

It was probably in the 'putting it together' phase that something went awry. No signal to the monitor is usually not the video card. Also, the HD may sound like it's working properly but that is probably just the initialization it does when it powers up.

You may need to disconnect all the drives and remove all the cards except video and see if you get a posting screen. If not, check that any jumpers on the MB are correct. Reseat the cpu and RAM. Make sure the MB is not grounding against the case.

Agree with Dave.....

Remove all drives other hardware/cards except what is absolutely necessary for a computer to boot and try turning it on.

Do you see the bios posting on the screen? If so....connect the hard drive and a very basic CD ROM. Boot again. If it is still booting...insert the XP Install CD and do the installation.

After XP is installed install the other stuff one by one (ie install one item, boot, let Windows install/configure, shut back down, install next hardware item, etc).

In general, the above process is good to use whenever building your own PC. Just plugging in all (extra) hardware all at once and firing it up invites problems when initially installing Windows (driver conflicts, etc).

Hope this helps and that you don't have any bad hardware.

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I disagree though,

You can still get no monitor signal if the video card is not seated firmly. I don't see what the hard drive has to do w/ the video getting to the monitor anyway.

Anyway, keep us posted.

May God bless everyone along the Gulf Coast trying to recover from Katrina. But let this be a lesson for America to turn back to God.

Yeah, if the card is bad or loose that's likely the problem. But usually when people get the 'no signal' message they automatically assume it's the card because everything else seems to be running. Yet that's only one of several hardware problems that can give those symptoms. And usually if it is the video card you'll get a beep error (of course he didn't mention if he was getting any beeps at all).

Disconnecting the drives and pulling the cards is just a way to verify if those items are causing the problem.