system not working - help!!!

[trav]

BIG problem acn anyone help? i have an epox board mvp3-g2 with AMD-2 k6-450 fujitsui 1.7hd, 64mb memory,sb live!, modem etc, and generic 8mb video card. i built the machine. it was fine for a few days and then found it kept cutting out. each time getting faster and faster, then rebooting after each cutting out, until you had a blank screen..
then it stopped all together for days. then one day i turned it on and moved the case slightly, and it came on. it was working great for two days then 'died'. now it does not work. i thought it was the mother board, and bought a gigabyte and still have the same symptons. that is:

hard drive activity light stays on and the boot up hard drive does not work. but the activity light only goes off if i take the drive off the controller cable. the hard drive then whirs into life. i took out the memory, then the cpu. still i have the same results.
not a beep from the system..
but my secondary drive whirs into life if i change it on the primary controller or keep it on the secondary controller. i changed the slave drive to the master and the system doesn't give off not a noise (any beeps at all). screen is blank!!

IF my hard drive was dead would not the system still boot up and say 'hard drive failure' - something like that?

is it my CPU or my memory?
it certainly is not my motherboards at all.
could it be a loose wiring somewhere on the case. or a faulty psu? help!!!!
i have built three machines before and have never come across this style before?

[ytay]

too generic, it could be a 100 tings, and you are right when you say check wiring, have you overclocked you system????, if so try reverting back

[buitenb]

i think it is the powersuply try a other !!

[trav]

Thanks you guys!!!.
ytay, my original board is an epox. if i overclocked the chip too much, the board would notify me - believe you me. the most i overclocked the AMD 450 chip was 558Mhz, in which it posted and locked up(heatsink fan & PC100 sdram needs to be upgraded.) but i had it at 504mhz no problems. but to you and Buitenb, yes i checked the wiring, making sure the right jumpers from case were connected to board, power and controller cables proper orientation. (a little note here. i plugged in the main controller to the c drive both ways and still ended up with a HD activity light still on.) that was ok. i moved some of the cable firing that normally feeds hardwware such as drive, cd etc, and the system went off!! and i moved the cable again while switching the case power button. the system went on. i moved cable again and it would not come on for around 10 minutes, no matter how much back and forward jiggling, until one jiggle too many, and it came on again.
So i am quite convinced that it is what Buitenb says - A faulty power supply. well it was a cheap Chinese number. suppose you gets what yah pay for! Thanks you guys a great deal.

Trav.

[jnas]

I have an epox mb and have had similar problems. I took the cover off and left it off and the problem just disappeared. If nothing else its worth a try.

[alpha]

Cover off and left it off? one word cooling

[alpha]

Once, I put in my IDE lead backwards. No post, no beeps, scared sh**less.

Disconnect everything bar the video card, ram and cpu. Unplug all unrequired leads, i.e. IDE, ATA, SCSI, FDD, reset, turbo, etc..

Give it a try and see what happens.