Hi,

I am new at putting my own hardware together, so please bear with my simple questions.

I just assembled the NF-M2PV motherboard and an AMD A64 X2 processor. I got the motherboard at Fry's. The first board allowed me to get into the bios for maybe 3 times at bootup. Then it stopped. The screens asks you to press Delete to get into SETUP. After pressing delete, the screen shuts off and nothing happens. I called tech support, they had me take out the bios battery (nothing different afterwards), reset the bios with the jumber (nothing different afterwards) till they told me the motherboard is bad, go get another one.

I did that. This one does not ever get me into the bios. It has the exact same problem. I have 2 new dimms (specs below), tried one at a time, the early screen sees the memory, processor HD (if connected, i tried both connected and not), CDROM (if connected), but I can't get into the bios.

Help! What is going on here? I guess one common thing between both motherboards is that both give me the CMOS checksum problem (battery low I guess???). Could that be it: since the battery is low, the system has some sort of fail/safe and does not let you into the bios in case your main power goes off while you are updating the bios and the battery does not provide any power backup?

My follow on question (if I ever get this thing to work is): my old HD has Windows XP home edition SP2. I found some documentation from AMD that their A64 X2s are compatible with WinXPHome. Is this correct? Tech support guy told me I can't boot up from HD, will need XP CD boot up and then update to the OS. Update to what?

Thanks!

System:
NF-M2PV motherboard
AMD A64 X2 5600+ (dual core) CPU
Corsair 1GB DDR 800 memory (2 dimms)
IDE HD
380W power supply

Try to boot with just the cpu, one dimm and the igp/gfx card.

You mean with the IDE cable disconnected? Did that too, no luck, same exact problem.

Could it be a bad CPU? How would I know?

Thanks.
-stefanka-

Well the psu you have isn't very 'wattey'. What graphics card do you have? The psu might've become degraded after too much strain.
As for testing the cpu, test it in a friends motherboard but cpus are rarely defective and last for years.
What voltage does the ram need? Default is 1.8v and those may need up to 2.1v.