comp won't fire up

Hi there. I am trying to breathe life into a PC that was given to me. I will try to give you as many details as possible. MB is an ECS V7VMM2, AMD cpu (not sure of teh speed though), 512 mgs DDR RAM, new Samsung 40 gig HD and a new 300 wat power supply. When I got the machine the PS and HD were gone and I added an extra 256 of RAM. when I start is up it goes for a second then either dies or chugs like an old car, cdrom lights pulse but there is nothing to the monitor and no MB beep. there is no smell of anything having popped on the MB or burnt out. I changed out the MB battery as well. Any ideas where to start looking? thanks

Brent

If you have a multimeter, you could test the PSU with this guide: http://www.ochardware.com/articles/psuvolt/psuvolt.html

or a small dedicated tester can be picked up cheap, like this: http://www.antec.com/us/productDetails.php?ProdID=77003


Liam

I tried two different power supplies and they are both fine. machine starts up for 6-7 seconds then shuts down. strange..

Clear the CMOS to reset the BIOS defaults. There should be a jumper on the motherboard to do that, if there isn't or you can't find it then pulling the motherboard battery out for a few minutes will achieve the same result. Then check that everything is firmly seated, cables, cards, RAM, etc., especially the graphics card. If that doesn't help, disconnect everything except the CPU, RAM and graphics card, and try to boot the PC. If it's still no go, take the mobo out of the case and lay it on some insulating material to make sure that it can't be shorting on anything.

Did the machine do the same thing before you added the extra 256 megs of memory?

well I cleared the s\CMOS and reset the BIOS, disconnected everything but the CPY, RAM and video. still the same. tried it with both sticks of RAM and each individually. i removed the mobo and let it sit for a while, reinstalled everything but still nothing, there is no bios beep, cpu fan comes on for 5-6 seconds then goes.

pinched wire from the PSU, check all wires for crush injury / cracks in insulation / splits..........how do i know? just did it last night to my old computer...the big oooops!!!!!

the same thing happens with 3 different power supplies, 2 I know were working 2 minutes before being hooked up and one brand new. I've switched the battery as well but I don't even get close to the boot up screen. i am thinking there may be something wrong with the PSU pin slot on the mobo.