Help needed: New setup won't post, stuck at 1 LED

[moseisley]

After doing all of RGone's settings for RAM and switching the 1 OCZ Platinum El Rev 2 512MB stick from slot #1 to #2 (where it should be), it would no longer post (made a bunch of repetitive beeping sounds). I know the sound is similar to sounds you get when a mobo doesn't detect a mouse/keyboard, so I tried using a PS2 keyboard, reboot, tried a ps2 mouse, reboot same problem. Held down insert while rebooting to get into bios. wouldn't let me. Finally, and I kid you not, I just said, screw it, let's put in a ps2 mouse and a usb mouse and a ps2 keyboard (as you can see I was bored) and suddenly I get post again and the DFI logo. Now it lets me go ahead and install windows (had the xp install CD) for the first time, although I cancelled that to see if I can go to 2x512MB and then run memtest.

 

WHAT DOES THE BEEPING SOUND MEAN (4-5 repetitive beeps after LED goes from 4 to 1 light) and you can't get post? Can someone enlighten me? Is it a generic warning for failed post? Or does it mean something like - no mouse/keyboard detected like it does in other mobos.

 

I can't believe how finicky this board is. It's like if the wind isn't blowing north, it doesn't want to do what it should do.

[moseisley]

The fact some guides to building with a DFI lanparty board says "switch the power on and off repeatedly, hit the mobo reset and power button for" to trouble shoot some of these problems just shows how unacceptably finicky this thing is. Yeah why Idon't I do a rain dance for 1 hour and come back and see if it works. It's equally effective.

[red930]

If you think that's strange,this was the prescription back in the NF2 days,

http://www.dfi-street.com/forum/showpost.p...63&postcount=13

[moseisley]

Thanks for your help Playah. I should mention that after my fiddle with the mouse/keyboards that after getting DFI to accept RAM in slot 2, I put the paired OCZ into slot 4, and it now works. I had similar problems where the LED would go to 1, make 4 beeping noises, and it was never one thing that fixed it. This is not too different than your link to the DF2 days but if anyone is having trouble where they can't get post, and the LED clearly goes to 1 and (if you have speaker changed to on, - default is silent on the mobo) you get repetitive beeps (4-5) but no post, try this...

 

I believe the DFI board has really screwy keyboard/mouse detection bios as you do a raw install. Therefore you have several options...

 

1) try a bunch of diff mouse/keyboards and if you're using USB, try PS2 (go old school), if that doesn't work, try combos of ps2 mouse and usb. Don't ask. It just works for some reason

2) to help the DFI figure out you have a keyboard, hold a key (others say insert) but it didn't matter for me. After a failed post (and the beeping noise), even better, before rebooting, hold down a key until you get the buffer noise coming from the computer, and then reboot, while the beeping (overrun buffer) is still going.. For some reason, this works more reliably for me than doing the 'hold insert after reboot'.

3) If #2 doesn't work, then instead of using the case powerbutton, use the motherboard reset/power buttons while doing #2. Don't ask me why, but prehaps the mobo buttons are better at renewing the mobo's efforts to detect a kb/mouse.

 

It definitely helps to enable the speaker jumper on the mobo so you can differentiate from the above troubleshoot from an altogether different troubleshoot where even with speaker on, you hear nothing and no post and just blank screen (and your LED is stuck at 1). The trouble shoot that worked for me is to swap just one RAM stick from the #2 slot (if you're following Rgone's FAQ) and move it to one of the yellows (#1 worked for me, but others have said #4). But as you can see with the troubleshoot above, you can get easily fooled into thinking it didn't work unless you keep retrying #1-3 for the '5-beep no post" troubleshoot above.

 

Lastly, if you are stuck at 3 LED, and hear nothing, don't assume it's just RAM. For some bizarre reason, swapping either an old graphic card in, or activating SLI and moving the graphic card to PCIE2 can get you past this. In retrospect I don't know if I had moved the RAM from #2 to #1 earlier that it also would have fixed the problem, but I'm not willing to go back to square 1. I'm pretty sure I had swapped the ram out for all other slots before, but can't guarantee it.

 

 

Hopefully having installed windows XP and having stable memtests, I can switch back to non-SLI mode. Others have reported being able to, despite similar early problems. I hope so, or else my apple cinema monitor will be useless.

[red930]

I'm glad you're doing much better,let us know how you get on.I'm saving this in fav's as others haven't had you're tenacity,maybe it'll help someone else.

 

BTW,when you get time,could you update your sig a little better,including your current bios,thanks

[moseisley]

In case anyone is following this thread....

 

I was able to get the mobo to post with my setup as described earlier - but I still had stability issues where the computer would hang, or not post again. I finally found out later that both the graphic card and one stick of RAM was bad. Both used to be on an A8N-SLI Asus board whose chipset fan went dead, and apparently it led to subtle damage to the graphic card and one stick of RAM. Both have been RMA'ed, but after finally being fed up with the lack of success - I blamed it on the DFI motherboard (before realizing my misdiagnosis) and returned it, and by that time got my RMA'ed Asus board back with a better chipset fan design.

 

It was when using the graphic card and ram on this new Asus board, that I was able to troubleshoot and find out that using a different graphic card fixed the problem. So the other scenario described in this thread by another user who was able to fix his problem by using an older graphic card - most likely you had a similar problem and just had a bad 6800card, unlikely as it would seem. My guess is that 1 stick of RAM went bad from all the swapping I did, since I did individually troubleshoot those and found they booted fine on an Abit board. As mentioned in this initial post that started this thread - testing the graphic card alone was the ONE Thing i did not do, thinking that it was highly unlikely to be the problem, but that assumption bit me in the butt.

 

All the little tricks I did to get the board to post, was probably just random chaos that seemed to be associated with the random stuff I did (swapping mouse/keyboards etc). Maybe swapping keyboards/mouses helps with ram instability- who knows....but clearly if these little finicky things were making the difference between post or no post - things were pretty hosed from the get go. I was just really really desperate to make the board work. In retrospect I would still go back to the DFI board just to milk its capabilities for overclocking in the future. But right now I'm just happy with a stable setup after 1 week of nonstop rebooting and screwdriving.

[seanmcgpa]

I struggled with this for a couple days with my new motherboard. EXACTLY the same symptoms.

 

I was playing with moving the jumbers from SLI to non-SLI mode to see if I could improve things ... when I noticed ... one of the sli jumpers had a slight "defect" ... there was no metal tracing one of the caps to complete the jumper. Out of the 8 or so, 1 on the end didn't have any metal... almost difficult to notice unless you really glanced at it.

 

I replaced the jumper with one that had a correct set and the system booted right away.

 

I am wondering if other people with these same symptoms are because of defective jumpers ?

 

 

 

I just bought the DFI Lanparty SLI board and have to say the overclocking features better be damn worth it, because compared to the Asus A8N SLI this board is as finicky as hell. I dumped the Asus because it had a chipset fan go bad and I knew this was a high probability looking at other complaints so switched to DFI.

 

I am setting up everything new, basically taking parts from the older setup and putting it into the new with the DFI board. It includes -

 

DFI Lanparty SLI board

2x512MB OCZ Platinum El Revision 2 (the one that everyone seems to be recommending here). Using only one stick now until this works

BFG Geforce 6800GT

FX-55

OCZ Powerstream 600

 

Of note: I already checked the FX-55 and RAM in another setup and know for sure they work fine. I haven't checked the bfg card...yet.

 

My main problem after following the FAQs, resetting CMOS correctly, plugging in all 4 power slots including a full 24 pin was that that the error LED would stick at 3 and not even the DFI logo or opening text screen would post. No beeps either. After reading that this was supposed to be a DRAM memory issue, it wasn't until after 24 hours of tinkering, including playing with where the RAM was inserted, to the point where I have only one in slot 2 or 4 (forget which)...none of the above helped. It was actually the BFG geforce card that it had problem with, because after activating SLI (it was off) and switching the card to the PCI-2 slot (further away from CPU) I was able to get the LED to go to 1 (supposedly system booting). Talk about a pain in the butt. I don't want SLI activated now (don't have the money for 2, and want to use my apple cinema monitor), so this is another issue, that if someone can't clarify I will probably return this if this means i have a lemon PCI-1 slot.

 

Now the problem is that after getting to 1 LED, the machine makes about 3-4 rapid beeping noises, but nothing shows up on the monitor (I have an apple cinema monitor which i know has issues with SLI, so I now have it hooked up to a regular monitor. Nothing shows up on the monitor. No text no DFI logo, and I tried hitting/holding del and insert before the 4 LED lights go and to no avail. My suspicion is that the graphic card simply isn't outputting to video. Why I have no clue. What else can I do to trouble shoot this?

 

Oh as for BIOS cause I have no clue. This setup has yet to post successfully.