Won't Boot up - LED confusion

[katra]

This was my first build, (done under the supervision of someone more knowledgeable,) so of course it couldn't go smoothly.

 

Upon power up, all fans start up, etc, and the motherboard goes through it's LED countdown- stops at 1 LED, and beeps once.

 

Honestly, I'm confused as to what the LEDs mean specifically*. 1 LED is listed in the DFI UT Lanparty manual as being 'VGE detected.' So my question for those more experienced with these boards is this: Is this an indicator that the video card is bad, or that it has passed that part and can't continue on to boot up (for some other unknown reason?)

 

Any responses would be appreciated; advice, questions, additional things to try.

 

 

 

*For example, if I take out the RAM, it stops at 3 LEDS- 'CPU Detected'. If I take out the video card entirely, it still stops at 1 LED. The pattern seems a bit funny to me, so I'd like to make sure.

[red930]

Here is the way to read the Diagnostic LEDs.

 

4 LEDs on = Power applied, checking CPU

3 LEDs on = CPU has been detected OK, checking RAM

2 LEDs on = RAM has been detected OK, checking VGA

1 LED on = VGA has been detected OK, entering BIOS

0 LEDs on = System has booted to the Operating System.

 

As long as you are in the BIOS including running memtest from the BIOS option, there will be one LED on.

 

Example: If you are getting 3 LEDs on, it means the rig is having trouble detecting the RAM.

 

The lower(PCI) Amber LED is the 5VSB indicator. The upper Amber LED is the RAM voltage indicator. Once the rig has started and been shut down the RAM LED will go out until the PSU is power cycled.

[katra]

Ah, thank you for the reply.

 

So, it's that the motherboard isn't making it into BIOS?

 

I'm a bit confused as to where to go from here.

[ganders75]

Have you already tried a Full CMOS clear (linkage in sig)? If the short clear doesn't work, try the progressively longer clears. Follow the directions in the post exactly, if you skip a step (for example, no PS/2 keyboard) then you'll have to start that clear from scratch...