Initially, I would check the connections to the motherbaord.
 
You should have a row of pins where you plug on things like the speaker, power LED, hard drive LED and so-on. It could be some of those are wrong and are causing problems.
 
Pull them all off and try again.
 
What video card are you using? If it's AGP and you have a PCI card kicking about, try that instead.
 
If it's a PCI card, you probably won't have an AGP card lying about, but can you borrow one to try it?

I had a similar problem when I first built my system: lights, camera, no action, and nothing telling me there was something wrong. then my friend told me to make sure my chip was seated properly, since sometimes the chip needs to be held down while locking the ZIF socket, or it won't be in all the way. So try reseating your chip. Failing that, I would try to swap your parts out with other known working parts and see if you may have gotten a bad chip/board/something.
 
AM I the olny one that kicka HUGE kick out of making Tony Hakw fall flat on has ass in the Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 2 Demo? that sends me to bed happy nightly... well, that and pr0n.
 
Good luck,
-bZj
 
[This message has been edited by Down8 (edited 26 October 2000).]

If you have a spare memory dimm try with that one instead. I don't remember how many times i had problems like yours because of bad memory modules.

Providing your motherboard, CPU and system speaker are not f*cked, you should be able to pull everything else (yes, even all LEDs etc) off the board (apart from the ATX power supply connection), then power it on:
 
If you get nothing, no beeps or anything, its probable that the ATX PSU (case)/board and/or CPU are dead(as speakers generally never fail) and one or all items will need to be replaced. Try testing the CPU at your favourite PC shop or at a friends house to rule out CPU failure.
 
Otherwise you'll get a beep error code, telling you various part(s) failed the POST. You can then add parts one by one (eg add the stick of RAM, then the AGP card etc) and see if you can identify the problem.
 
Its very important to change only one thing at a time. I cannot stress that enough with thses sort of problems.... good luck!

I had the same problem with my curren mobo.
 
First of all Athlons (all K7's) need a massive power supply. At least 300W and AMD approved. My old PSU (pre athlon) was 250W. When I pressed the power button all that would happen is that the case fan would rotate a quarter turn. Thats all! I disconnected everything, and it would come alive, but only until the video was initialised. Then it just died (power off).
 
I got an athlon approved PSU. Set it up, still nothing. The PC shop Sound Technology Systems said they had had the same reports. So I took it back and all the PSUs were sent back. So I got a new one, with a different HI-POT date and it is working perfectly.
 
But before you embarass yourself make sure you have connected the power on switch to the correct pins, not suspend or sleep, or some other obsure thing. I do it all the time, and I have had friends and friends of friends, the odd driving instructor!, and people I don't even know turn up at my house with a new motherboard that doesn't work for this reason.
 
Oh, also, I bought a athlon motherboard from www.dabs.com, and this was before I had my approved power supply. Apparantly the board can be damaged if the power supply is not powerful enough. Haste to say, the board never worked (oops <:-D ), still the dabs people though it was a cache problem, and took it back.
 
Also make sure if the board allows normal AT power connects that the correct switch is set. IE ATX/AT is set to ATX.
 
 
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System Spec:
Athlon 800
Gigabyte GA-7IXE F4
128Mb SSi PC100
Radeon 64Mb DDR (oem and proud of it)
Hauppauge Wintv Model 406
Realtek 8029 LAN (cnx to ISDN server)
Creative ES1371 PCI64v
Creative SBlive Value
Creative 48mx CDROM
Memorex TriMaxx200(DVD/CDR/CDRW/CD, 4,6,4,24)
Segate SS330630A 30Gb 7200 ATA4
LS120

Ahh, the trials and tribulations of building an Athlon. Here's a few things that I messed up, I mean I hear that other people messed up , when I built mine:
 
1. Make 100% sure the Athlon is in all the way. That bugger is a pain to get in sometimes, and the first Athlon I built didn't even power on at first because the processor wasn't properly seated.
 
2. Make 110% sure the video card is properly seated. The second Athlon I built wouldn't boot because the video card wasn't in all the way.
 
3. Check to see the power connectors are all in the right place. While trying to figure out why my first Athlon wouldn't boot (that unseated processor again) I accidentally unplugged the case power connector, and then plugged it in wrong; I think I swapped it with the speaker or something else really stupid. Same goes for the ATX power connector, though that's not as easy to mess up as those AT connectors (why must they give you two identical-looking connectors that are not swappable?).
 
4. The floppy drive and hard drive problems sound all too familiar to me. Try disconnecting the floppy drive. My third Athlon did the very same thing and wouldn't boot because the floppy connector was in backwards.
 
5. I second euankirkhope's suggestion to get a decent PS. Your "computer expert" brother in law would be right, except that Athlons eat wattage for breakfast, and you need a minimum of a 250W power supply on most Athlon motherboards just to power the motherboard and processor, let alone peripherals. I'd be shocked if it even POSTed with 230W.
 
Hope this helps.

I recently built a new machine and experienced this problem. I had mixed up the system connection pins. As a result not only would the system not POST, but the machine would power on with just a PSU switch on.
 
Check those cables
 
 
 
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Regards
Kristian Dorey AMIAP