Hi all,

I'm having a very frustrating problem that I believe is linked to my Abit BE6-2 motherboard.

Here's my system setup:

Abit BE6-2 Motherboard Rev 1.01 (I think) Latest UH BIOS
Pentium III 700 MHz
Crucial PC-100 SDRAM
Creative GeForce 2 Video Card
Creative SB Live Value Sound
Linksys NIC
2 Hard Drives
1 CD-ROM
1 HP CD-Writer
AOpen Switching Power Supply FSP300-605 (300W)
Sony CPD-420GS Monitor
3 Case Fans (2 Hooked to Power Supply - 1 Hooked to MB)

I'll try not to make this lengthy.

Occasionally when turning on the system, the power light turns on, hard drive light starts, CD lights turn on, fans are audible but there is no video signal to the monitor.  A reboot almost never fixes the problem.  However, if I leav
e the computer for an extended period without doing anything (anywhere from 1/2 hour to overnight) it will usually start up without a hitch.  (Side note: once an over night wait ddn't help.  Curiously the Numlock light on my keyboard never went out during this time so I unplugged the computer - waited, numlock was no longer lit and then it worked).

Since the problem is so sporadic I've never really been able to tell what I've been doing before the problem occured.  I know it happened immediately after installing a new processor.  Tonight it happened when I first tried to start up immediately after plugging in a new USB scanner for the first time.  Other times it's happened after unplugging the system and sometimes it's happened just turning it on after making no changes.  Unfortunately I haven't been able to scientifically keep good track of this kind of stuff.

Searching the newsgroups has not yielded a fix but I don't think I'm the only one having similar p
roblems with this board.

Once when it happened I swapped out the processor for a Celeron 300 (Didn't help)

I also tried putting in an Nvidia TNT video card. (Didn't help)  I've also tried reseating the GF2 and it doesn't seem to help.

I also tried an old "non-power saving" monitor and had the same problem.

Tonight I tried disabling JP1 and JP2 (control wake on mouse/keyboard and power failure behavior respectively).  Neither made any difference.

Tonight I noticed that neither case fan connected to the power supply was running, I'd never noticed this before and don't know if it's related.

Resetting the BIOS to the fail safe defaults doesn't seem to help either (nor does holding down the insert key when powering on).

The only thing that (so far) has fixed the problem without fail has been to leave the computer for a while and come back to turn it on later.

Well I'm hoping it will
 boot tomorrow when I get home.  Perhaps then I can get my mail and see if anyone on the PCBuild group has heard of this before and can help.

Thanks for taking the time to read this,

Bill Nussbaumer

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