ASUS P5A boot failure

[George]

Today I put together a computer with an ASUS P5A. It has a
AMD K6-2/500 CPU. When I power up, the boot sequence
goes through the POST and detects the BIOS, the CPU, and
the RAM and then hangs after looking for the the PCI devices.
It hangs at the message:

PNP Init Completed

with the cursor sitting there blinking after the letter d.

I have disconnected every device I can from the board
except for the AGP video card ( ATI Rage Pro ) and
still the same result. The ASUS manual seems to have no information
about problems of this sort. One sort of unusual behavior
involves the case power switch. Its turn on the power to the
board at any time but will only turn off the power during
the POST. After the POST and when the system has hung the
case power switch will not turn off the power to the board.
Also when I hit the delete button and look at the set up
I find the CPU voltages normal and that it has detected the
floopy.

I hope someone has a clue for me. I would appreciate any
help that might be forthcoming.

George

 

[Steven Hilgendorf]

Are you using an ATX power supply or do you have a P5A-B mainboard and
using an older AT power supply, with the attached pigtail power switch?

Have you tried booting to a bootable floppy diskette, without having any
hard drives attached to the IDE controller?

Sorry, I know, more questions than answers...

Steven

 

[George]

Thanks Steven,
Yes, I have an ATX power supply and not the old AT kind that
you mention. Another part of this story is that this main board
is the replacement for another ASUS P5A that exhibited exactly
the same behavior. I asked this same question on this group
a few months ago and received some good help. Mainly it was
suggested that disconnect everything possible from the board
til I found the offending device. I have done that and the
behavior is the same no matter what is attached to the board.
I wonder if I should reset the CMOS memory? I am really perplexed.
Thanks.

George

 

[Beemer Biker]

Thanks Steven,
Yes, I have an ATX power supply and not the old AT kind that
you mention. Another part of this story is that this main board
is the replacement for another ASUS P5A that exhibited exactly
the same behavior. I asked this same question on this group
a few months ago and received some good help. Mainly it was
suggested that disconnect everything possible from the board
til I found the offending device. I have done that and the
behavior is the same no matter what is attached to the board.
I wonder if I should reset the CMOS memory? I am really perplexed.
Thanks.

George

if you are getting thru the post and can actually hit delete and get into
the cmos then it is o.k. I assume you got the latest bios 10.11 or somethign
like that. I suggest going back over the jumpers make sure they are set
correctly and set the speed to 66mhz if you got a couple of memory chips,
take out all but one. What sound board are you using? Any unusual boards
like scsi, etc? pull them out.

 

[Steven Hilgendorf]

Then you received excellent advise before ) Didn't answer my second
question concerning the bootable floppy diskette though? Try getting
the system to boot to the floppy drive before adding any other IDE devices.

Speaking of 'floppy diskette' are you sure the floppy drive cable is
connected to the furthest two ends of the cable, and are you sure it's
connected properly to the floppy drive (pin one on drive -to- pin 1, red
stripe, on cable) which can be a common mistake?

Did you try laying the mainboard on an anti-static surface and trying to
get it running outside the chassis, so there's no questions concerning
grounding and/or standoff shorts?

Does the processor, memory, and P/S work on another mainboard, i.e have
you ruled out faulty hardware?

You can try resetting CMOS, but I doubt that's your problem, especially
since you can enter CMOS on startup. Getting two bad P5A's with the
same problem is unlikely, so your problem is probably staring at you...

Steven