Hardware help!

[Mythix]

Well I'm currently scrapping together a piece of shit machine for a relative that just needs something cheap. I have everything good to go, all of the hardware is in check. The minute I boot up it doesn't post, the monitor  does the same thing my other one does, acts like it will boot up then it just .. doesn't. The graphic card seems to be in fine condition, I used it a couple months ago. I currently have been going simple right now to figure out why it isn't working.

Graphic card, Ram, Processor, Power to them and a hd with just a ribbon to the motherboard is all thats plugged in, any suggestions?

[iago]

I believe I read somewhere that the computer needs 3 things to post: Ram, Motherboard, Cpu.

I'd suggest swapping hardware with another machine until the other machine stops working.

Does it make any noise?  There are ways of telling what's wrong by the series of pc-speaker beeps. 

[Mythix]

I get no noise at all :/

[Sty]

:|, usually a graphic card wont work unless you have drivers for it already installed.. which is what happened to me not to long ago, no beeps/obvious errors just nothing displayed on the monitor.. so you may need to install the drivers for the graphic card before you try to boot your system with your graphics card in it (use integrated graphics or something)..

[Quik]

When I built this system, it didn't have integrated graphics. I had to insert my graphics card before I could see anything, but luckily it didn't require drivers for the card (or I would have been screwed :p).

In my experiance, any time this machine couldn't boot up it gave me a series of beeps; a code. I just had to look what it was trying to tell me (the information is out there). Unfortunately for you, there's no beeps. I'd suggest testing each part, making sure they all work (single out the bad egg).

[Ergot]

eww sty no! graphics card should all work without the drivers.. just as a normal vga card or something crappy like that until it can recognize what it is.

[Mythix]

hm, I have power to everything else, I know the processor is fine, I can feel it heat up, I still don't get any errors on it, I'm sick of checking tonight I'll try it tomorrow, I hear everything boot up fine though, even the harddrive starts turning and you can hear it spin so meh :/

[iago]

eww sty no! graphics card should all work without the drivers.. just as a normal vga card or something crappy like that until it can recognize what it is.

Yeah, there's no reason it wouldn't finish the POST (or attempt it) without drivers, seeing as though that's all done by the BIOS.  It's the OS that wouldn't load without proper drivers.

[Sty]

I'm just saying from my own experiences, with my Radeon 9200 it will NOT post with out the proper drivers installed.. you get the black screen of blankness.

[iago]

That doesn't really make sense, since the drivers are a OS thing, and a system can post without a Harddrive.

[Mythix]

Hm I'll have to check my connections from the case to the motherboard again, at least last time when I had problems I heard noise. I'm frustrated as hell over this. Might take it into college tomorrow and have one of the hardware majors look at it.