Shuttle woes

I foolishly offered to build a computer for a family friend, and it's not going so well. I got him a Shuttle SN27P2, Athlon 5000+, 2GB of Corsair RAM, ATI X1650XT graphics card, and Western Digital drive (among other stuff, but I figured that was all that's pertinent). After putting it all together, I have two problems:

Infrequent bootup success rate

This is a little troubling. I press the power button, fans start whirring, the LEDs on the front are lighting up fine, the hard drives seem to be spinning, the video card fan is spinning, everything looks right...but no video. The monitor shows that it's not getting a signal. I also get the sense that it's not merely a video problem, but that the machine isn't even getting to the POST. Every time, I'm able to press the power button to turn it off. But every 4th-6th try (or so), I'll get the POST, the machine will boot up, and run normally until the next reboot when I go through it all over again. Could the problem just be that I have an old CRT hooked up via DVI-VGA adapter?

Windows only "half-installs"

This one is tough to explain. I've now installed an official, licensed (though OEM) copy of XP Pro on this machine three times, and each time has been exactly the same. I get to the graphical installation screen, past the "regions and dialects" part, and suddenly the install asks for the Windows SP2 disks. WTF? SP2 is supposed to be included in the one disc (it says so on the disc its self). But still, it asks for me to point it to the location of the disc. I keep trying to point it in the right direction, but it refuses to do anything. It gives me a browse option, but it can't seem to see any files/folders in any drive it points me to (and the icons for all the drives are blank - just a white space). So I cancel it, as well as a couple more dialogs asking for the same thing. Then, when I finally get into the "installed" Windows, I have a flawed installation. Tons of stuff is missing, networking isn't installed, and the OS keeps giving me errors if I try to install any other stuff from the XP CD (like, oh, networking!).

Can anyone help? I'm sort of freaking out here. I don't want to screw this machine up and have to send stuff back.


ps-I'm a little disappointed in Shuttle - this system was not very easy to get stuff into. The power/data cables for the hard drives have to be contorted in the worst way. The video card needs to be wrestled into place juuust so. Worst of all, there was a screw for the expansion slot machanism on the back that was so tightened on (by a machine, I assume), even though I applied a great amount of pressure, I completely stripped the head. I had to use quite a bit of strength and needlenose pliers to get it out. I hope nobody nearby heard the cursing this machine has brought forth from me...

When I've seen something like this it's been bad memory.

What blitz said. Check the memory first with memtest86 or something. With this kind of problem, I'd probably go through the following list:

• Check the memory
  
• Clear the CMOS data and go through the BIOS settings
  
• Check for a BIOS update from Shuttle
  
• Swap the IDE cable to your CDROM drive with one you know is good (I have had a number of Shuttles with iffy cables).
  
• Try another CDROM drive

There are a few more things to try, but the probability of fixing it is diminishing after the above list. Let us know how you get on.

Thanks for the help. I'll try those when I get home tonight.

Oh, and can I just say that I absolutely hate thermal paste? That is the most horrible stuff in history. First, I'm never sure how much to put on, second, it's impossible to spread around (which is much harder now that the dye takes up the whole chip), and if you get any on your skin it takes Lava soap to get off. Argh!

Anyway, I'm pretty sure I put the right amount on, but every failure with this rig makes me wonder. Could that cause this?

No, badly applied paste has very different symptoms. If you put too much paste then you will be looking at a heat problem. This would not show up by not POSTing or stop your PC from turning on. It would also not stop your Windows installation failing. It would instead cause crashing, hanging and possibly erratic behavior (spontaneous rebooting etc). Modern CPUs clock themselves down drastically when they detect rising temperatures so they can feel sluggish.

You can check for sure by using any number of benchmarks or soak testing tools.

Oh yeah, I'd also try a different Windows Installation CD. Have you used the one you have now before? It could be messed up.

A generic copy of XP just may work better. I had a problem installing XP when I used a dell disk in a compaq computer. While a had a valid license for the compaq the system wouldn't except it. I had to telephone in to get it activated. It did not stop the disc from loading it just told me that the key was invalid.

Memory sounds like a good place to start. What are you running for clock speeds? Overclocking?

Oh I'm definitely not overclocking.

Now that I'm home, I wanted to post one more symptom that didn't strike me until just now. When the machine fails to display video, the fan on the video card is going at max speed, non-stop. The occasional times I get it to boot, it doesn't do that at all.

Now I'll try the suggestions...

Too much paste can sometimes create subtle signal shorts, usually resulting in the machine not booting at all. The correct amount is as little as you can possibly apply to barely and uniformly cover the entire contact areas of both pieces (CPU and heatsink mating surfaces).

Cheers

Do you have a different graphics card to try?

Quote:
Do you have a different graphics card to try?

Unfortunately, no. I have a bunch of AGP cards and even a few PCI cards, but no other PCIe cards.

Well, I got Windows to install correctly, but wouldn't you know it, now it won't load the OS properly. I have this suspicion that the resolution for the video card is too high for the tiny 14" CRT I'm using, so nothing is displayed (although I would think the monitor's LED would indicate a lack of signal in that case - it's still green, but nothing's showing). It figures that I had everything working until I applied all the Windows updates...crap.

But the power issue is still there as much as ever. I removed all the components, wiped away the thermal paste from the CPU and heatsink, and reapplied the correct amount. I haven't really had a chance to run memtest86. Hopefully I'll be able to do that tonight.