Mohterboard help......Please!

Hi, have a computer that locks at the bios version screen (where it says press F2 for help, etc.)
Thought it was the board, installed a new board and first error message was CPU change faield or something to that effect, went into set up to change and found no option to do so.
Now it goes into an endless booting loop, it runs throught the post and bios info and then starts over again and again, I cannot boot from any source.
The box is running 2003 SB server, the old mobo was intel d865gbf, the new one is a biostar p4vm ver 7.8, also tried another board from another desktop and ran into the same booting problem. The board recognises all the drives but won't boot to them. any ideas?

Are the jumpers set correctly for cpu speed or are you trying to over-clock the cpu?

not trying to overclock, cpu is 2.66 p4, in bois clock speed is set at 133, and can only enter a max of 165?. The biostar mobo came with very little documentation, the only jumpers on the board appear to be for audio.

There should be a jumper next to or around the cmos battery. Try moving that one pin over, push the power button, it should NOT turn on, then switch it back and try starting it, it should now turn on... I'm sorry I really didn't get to read all of your post, I'm in a huge hurry...

yep, already tried clearing cmos, talked to another tech and he thought maybe a cpu problem, try that I guess, thanks for your help.

Well, it's not a dead cpu, maybe a faulty cpu... If the cpu were completely dead you wouldn't even make it to the splash screen, but I agree with the tech, try to switch out the cpu and see what happens, if nothing new happens then I really don't know... Could there be an incompatability between the new mobo and cpu? The fact that it goes through this endless booting loops is kind of strange... When it goes through POST do you hear any beep codes??

Well, did you try a new cpu yet? Now that I think of it, a faulty PSU will cause similar problems as well... possibly faulty ribbon cables as well, though I doubt it, it's not as likely as a faulty PSU...

Tried another cpu and works fine, put the "bad" cpu in another box and have been running it all morning

So you put another cpu in the new mobo and it works fine, you put the old cpu in another mobo, and now that works fine to?? So... I think we can safely say at first it was a dead mobo, and then a matter of incompatability?

that, or an intermittant problem that's going to have me pulling my hair out

maybe you got a hard drive problem, or memory. Anyway it
doesn't seem to be the motherboard. I usually suspect everything
but the motherboard and only condemn it if I can't find the problem
elswhere.
:cool:

rcgreen might be on to something, try swapping HDD's with the one that was with the faulty mobo and see if it works, if the same crap starts happening then we know what the problem is... But i'm curious, if it really was the HDD, wouldn't we be getting a disk boot failure?? I'm almost certain we would...

**Edit**

Now that I think of it, it's not a HDD problem, because he said the problem starts at the bios splash screen, if that's so then bios hasn't even loaded the configurations yet or even looked at where to get an OS, so it's not the HDD.

Man, I gotta start thinking before I post, I must be going brain dead :p lol...

I thought mabye hdd to but I tried a diagnostic board from uxd and it wouldn't even function, so now I'm thinking could it be a power supply problem? maybe and intermittant failure of the boxes pwr suplly or possibly the ups? I just know as soon as I return this computer it's gonna fail.

Note: I did reinstall all the original parts and have been giving it a good workout but so far it's not failing

Yes, I brought up the possibility of a faulty PSU earlier in this thread, The only way to check is with a voltmeter or swap it with a known good one...

I'm positive it's not the HDD, look above your post to see my explanation.