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Booting problem with brand new system

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by eser

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Hi--I'm having a horrible boot up problem:

I recently purchased a barebone, BRAND NEW aopen mini pc (MB915-B SuperMulti), and installed a new 740 pentium M 1.73 CPU, new Kingston 1 Gig DDR2 pc-4200 ram, and a new 120 GB western digital HD.
The system can only connect keyboard/mouse via USB and i have a wireless mouse/keyboard combo by logitech i have connected (works fine with my laptop)

Here is the problem I am having:
When I connect via VGA (did this with two separate monitors and got the same results) the system boots from disk (to install the OS), then gets crazy pink lines down the screen. then the keyboard goes dead and the system can then be turned off by depressing the power button. When i try and turn it back on, the system makes a quick start up sound, then is almost whisper quiet, but nothing happens (the monitors never came on during this part and the keyboard is completely dead as no lights come on when the num lock or caps lock is depressed).
So i thought it was perhaps the DVI to VGA adaptor and then connected it to my TV via the s-video output (this too was done on two separate tvs). again, the system boots up to boot from disk, (no crazy pink bars this time though) and again, boot the OS CD to install the OS, the system stops, the keyboard fails. system is soft reset again, and again, when trying to start up, i get no response on the tv and the system does a quick spin up and then goes almost completely quiet withthe keyboard dead. if i try and start up with the cd in, i can hear it spinning and possibly trying to automatically boot, but there is no visual output.
(this sequence, with the visual output first, then the death of the keyboard, then after trying to restart having no visual output happens repeatedly, but i only get visual output if the system has been resting for a while---if not, then every reset appears to have no video signal)

any help is greatly appreciated, as all components are brand new and i have no way of checking them to see if functional!

6 replies

by jmgarvin

Are you trying to install or is the OS preinstalled? What OS? What video card? What monitor?

by eser

No, nothing is installed, I am trying to install an OS on it. (Right now, Windows XP Pro). I don't know the video card on board, but all specs are given here: http://minipc.aopen.com/Global/spec_915.htm
(minus the HD, RAM, and CPU info i'd given you before).

Right now, it's connected to my LCD TV (LG 37 LC2D), but I have the same problem when it was connectd to my older JVC.
Also, the monitors I had tested it with were an older 20" HP CRT Monitor and a newer (VGA only) 19" widescreen Acer LCD monitor.

by chris_atb

sounds like your computer is confused as to which output it should be using, do you have 2 VGA adapters? 1 on board and 1 video card?

i used to have an NVidia GeForce 5200 connected to an asus KVM400 board that did things similar to what your describing, try going into the BIOS and specifying which card and which output on that card is primary.

and later on i got similar results when i built a new PC from scratch, couldnt figure out for the life of me what was up until i noticed that everytime i booted into bios and left it for a while it would freeze up, the end result was bad RAM ;) try leaving it in BIOS for around 5 minutes if you suspect it could be this.

and your keyboard and mouse set is white and ash grey right? my father bought this combo and it works a treat usually, but sometimes (and really, its like one in a blue moon) it does just lock up and you get no response from either keyboard or mouse until you unplug, leave it for a while then reboot.

by eser

the system only has the on board video (it's too small for a separate one, the only free slot there is is a mini pci slot--info here: http://minipc.aopen.com/Global/spec_915.htm
). I've only ever connected it to ONE video output at a time--i had just tried it with two separate vga monitors and two separate tvs. i can't get into the bios--i see the first screen, where it says to hit delete to enter setup, but it doesn't allow that! (as the keyboard's not working at that time, so i can't enter the bios).
my keyboard/mouse set is black with some gray.

by eser

So, last night, i saw on the start up screen what looked like it said (after the CPU info) for memory that i had 0 + 8MB on board installed. So, this morning, i opened up the comp and removed and re-inserted the ram and turned on the computer, this time with only the cpu and ram on (hard drive and dvd. This time it said i had 1 gig (1024etcetcetc) + 8MB installed... and after about a few tries, let me get into the bios! HOWEVER, in the bios as i was trying to go through the settings the keyboard stopped working again and the computer got quiet (fan still spinning though). so i tried rebooting, and it did the thing again where it seems to start up, then goes quiet, but nothing appears on the screen (when it does this, it also takes a very long time to power off when i hold the power button, whereas, the first time it boots and i see stuff on the screen, it goes off immediately after depressing the power button). I tried taking out the ram as well, so now it's just board and cpu and keyboard and the same thing happened, where it makes noise like it's starting up, but no video and then immediately gets quiet. HELP??

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