You can also disable monitoring of the -5V rail in the bios, that will get rid of the annoying error message.

Sorry to jump on an old thread, but I have a P5A experiencing similar issues where it powers on but no beeps, no POST. Tried all the normal things, 1 stick of RAM, different RAM, different PSU, different Processor with same result. The board powers on with no beeps and no POST. The only difference with mine is that the board tries to power on as soon as the PSU gets turned on or plugged into power, it just starts up. There are no jumpers on the board to short the power on pins or reset pins. There were a couple things mentioned earlier in posts that I wanted to ask about

- Held in a reset state
- Having trouble with power states (sleep/off/on)
- Have improper voltages somewhere (caused by bad caps, for instance)

Is there a way to verify the first two or a way to test out the board? My keyboard lights for caps lock / num lock / etc start blinking as well, which makes me think its in a constant reset state maybe? I really dont want to lose this board. ITs had this issue for over a year and I wont get rid of it in the hopes something comes up......I dont see any bad traces around the CPU socket either. I havent tried pressing down on the CPU to see what happens due to the auto power on thing it does.

Any advice is greatly appreciated!

The easiest way to check is with a POST diagnostic card. Most will have several LEDs that show the status of certain power rails or signal lines, including the reset signal. Reset should only be on initially, at power up, until the PSU stabilises the output rails and sends a 'power good' signal to the board, or when you press the reset button; after that reset signal should get turned off, which allows the CPU and motherboard to boot up. If something is keeping the reset signal on, the system can not continue booting.

Which happens to be the issue I'm currently having with one of my P5A-B boards. I have another one that works okay, so I used that one to double-check all jumper settings, so it shouldn't be an issue of anything being misconfigured. I've tried with a couple different CPUs (a couple K6-2s and a Pentium MMX, all known to be working) and even without a CPU, it's always the same result - reset signal stays on, all other LEDs on the POST card seem ok and the display reads -- --. It also doesn't change anything whether I use the ATX or AT power connector. The reset connector isn't physically shorted and the power good line from the PSU is high, so that eliminates the obvious potential causes I can think of.

Originally the board did have one punctured capacitor (one of the row of capacitors below the socket, I assume part of the VRM), which I replaced, as well as two adjecent ones that showed some slight physical damage. The punctured cap was completely bad, but the other two were still completely in-spec, so I assume the rest of the caps should still be good as well. And the VRM is outputting the correct voltage that I set with the VID jumpers. Other than the caps I replaced, I could not visually identify any obvious physical damage on the pcb or other components, though I could only do that with the naked eye and a bright light, as I don't have a microscope.

Unfortunately this is as far as my knowledge of electronics and the boot process extends, so I have no good idea how to proceed, where and how to look for what is keeping the reset signal high. Any hints or ideas would be helpful 😀

Smack2k wrote on 2020-12-08, 23:11:

Sorry to jump on an old thread, but I have a P5A experiencing similar issues

Would you take some good pictures of the board and post them here please?
Does the speaker make any noise? Klicking, buzzing, whatever.