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My computer that I have been putting together will not start up. I have an ASUS a7v266, athlon xp 1600+, 256MB RAM from crucial, Enlight Case 300w. Everything is connected properly, the jumpers are in the correct postition, thought they were not at first. The LED light on the motherboard lights up like it is getting power when I plug it in. However, when I hit the switch, nothing happens. No fans, no beeps, nothing. One thing that may have had some effect was that the jumper cap by the CMOS was not on initially. When I put it on and plugged in the power, it began to smoke :| I immediately pulled the cord out, and it stopped. This did not happen again when I tried it again. I have been trying to boot up, fiddling with various switches, and resetting the BIOS. Any suggestions and possible solutions are welcome. Thanks for reading the whole post.

Holy $h17,
Sounds like a bad mobo to me.
However if you are determined, the best way to troubleshoot is to remove all components, other than the CPU/vid and see if you get anything, next is to slowly start adding components.
-Kim Komando
P.S. keep us updated! What part was smoking???

Oh yeah. The smoking ocurred at the jumper right by the CMOS. Yeah that definitely was not cool, but I'm still looking for help.....

Does your CPU fan plug into your mb or "Y" off of your power supply wires? I read somewhere that some new mobos won't run without the fan connected to the mb as a safety feature or something.

On 2002-01-17 22:09, NaeblisHoya wrote:
... One thing that may have had some effect was that the jumper cap by the CMOS was not on initially. When I put it on and plugged in the power, it began to smoke :| ...

Ok generally if the magic smoke comes out from any part of a motherboard, it is dead. Not sure what would cause it, but I would expect its time to get a new board

The magic smoke is gone. Seek you the mighty thing called RMA.

Try reversing the the Power jumper, that is, turn the plug-in adapter 180 degrees so that the polarity is changed--a system won't power on if you have the colored-wire (versus the white wire) on the wrong pin. It would give you a light, but no power being drawn from the ATX adapter. I would do as recommended above--make sure the only things inserted into the mobo are the CPU, the RAM and the AGP card and see if you get a POST (power-on self test).

On the other hand, smoke is a really bad sign and you might not want to damage any parts that are ind fact good

Someplace said that one Asus MB had the instructions for shorting the CMOS the opposite way, ie. manual showed shorted as being the way to run it normally.
Anyone else remembers more?