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[LonWar]

Hello All....
This morning my computer frooze, so I rebooted it... To mu shock, nothing happened... Screen didn't flicker, Bios didn't start up nothing.

I removed the sound card, replaced the keyboard and mouse, removed the secondary HD, reseeted the Video Card and still nothing.

The fans turn on, the HD spins, but the screen is totaly dead. If I unhoock the computer, the screen displays No source.. So it's not the monitor.


The only other thing I can think of is the Motherboard... It's a store bought so the procesor and the board are soldered on there.
Any idea's?

[Mr ChriZ]

Could be many things.  I've had dodgy graphics cards that have done this,
I've also had issues where it's the memory.

What make is the motherboard?

My Asus board has a convienient feature in that if you have speakers
attatched to the onboard sound, and it wasn't turned off anywhere, they'll
actually tell you whats wrong, in english, in a star-trek style voice.

Other motherboards will beep at you if you've got the PC speaker
plugged in.  A number of beeps is like an error code you've got to look up in the manual.

[KingSparta]

Check The Video Board If you Have A Extra Card Laying Around.

[benn600]

I hate troubleshooting.  One of our computers (we have three identical computers) started beeping when I turned it on and then didn't boot, but it booted fine after shutting it down and turning it on again.

Check for hard drive activity: is it actually booting or is anything happening?  I'm wondering if it's booting and you just can't see it?

[LonWar]

Mr Chriz... It was a asuz board It think... It was a store bought clone.

KS, I removed the video board and used the onboard video, I got the temp screen, then it went to the initializing screen, and stopped.
I unpluged, and tried again, and nothing.... Everything powers on, the HD's spin, but nothing happens.

It might be the trash can in the sky for this thing.

Thanks for the suggestions.

[glynor]

Yeah... That sounds pooched.  Only other thing I'd check, if possible, was to:

1. Swap out the RAM.  Bad RAM (or just poorly seated RAM) can cause a machine to not POST (boot up at all).
2. Swap out the CPU.

However, the fact that you got "something" with onboard video (but then nothing again) makes me very suspicious that that motherboard is pouring voltage into all the wrong places (and not enough into the right places).  Plus, unless you have them overclocked and overvolted, CPUs and RAM very rarely just up and die for no reason.  If so, it's usually within the first month or two of use (the old bathtub curve).  How old is the system (particularly the RAM and CPU)?

The motherboard on the other hand, could easily have had a voltage regulator that was always bad (but functional) that suddenly finally relented to the strain.  Hopefully, it didn't dump to much extra current into your other components!  If possible, and you plan to re-use the other major components (RAM and CPU), I'd have them tested at a local computer shop before I spend money replacing the board.

[LonWar]

Yeah... That sounds pooched.  Only other thing I'd check, if possible, was to:

1. Swap out the RAM.  Bad RAM (or just poorly seated RAM) can cause a machine to not POST (boot up at all).
2. Swap out the CPU.

However, the fact that you got "something" with onboard video (but then nothing again) makes me very suspicious that that motherboard is pouring voltage into all the wrong places (and not enough into the right places).  Plus, unless you have them overclocked and overvolted, CPUs and RAM very rarely just up and die for no reason.  If so, it's usually within the first month or two of use (the old bathtub curve).  How old is the system (particularly the RAM and CPU)?

The motherboard on the other hand, could easily have had a voltage regulator that was always bad (but functional) that suddenly finally relented to the strain.  Hopefully, it didn't dump to much extra current into your other components!  If possible, and you plan to re-use the other major components (RAM and CPU), I'd have them tested at a local computer shop before I spend money replacing the board.

Hi Glynor... I'll try the Ram when I get home.... The CPU is part of the board.. Non Removable.

Overclocking... Man are you ever talking to the wrong person there.... I wouldn't have the first clue..
The Computer is about 1-1/2 to 2 years old.
I think I just may have ran it to long... I had it on for a few day's, not doing anything really intensive, and everything was VERY hot.... I'm thinking that maybe the CPU fan, wasn't all that good... It was pretty small...


Thanks,

[newsposter]

think power supplies.

A weak or overloaded power supply can easily cause problems like this.

It's not just enough to say that you have a "500 watt" power supply.  The damned thing has to work properly too.

[glynor]

The power supply could be the issue (and that is a component that can fail unexpectedly).  Typically PSU problems don't manifest quite that way though... Usually it'll be terribly unstable, will POST but not boot, or won't do anything at all (no fans or anything).

However, newsposter has a good point.  I'd test it too.  Luckily, the PSU is pretty easy to test.  All you need is a regular voltage meter, a diagram that shows what amount of power it should be putting out on each "pin", a paperclip or little piece of wire, and a little time.  I did have an issue once that manifested in corrupted display issues -- I was convinced it was a bad motherboard (since I had only recently replaced it) and it turned out to be a bad PSU.  I discovered this only after I had again replaced the motherboard though (which was less than fun).

Here's a great tutorial: http://www.ochardware.com/articles/psuvolt/psuvolt.html

Here's a good diagram for the pinout on a standard 20-pin ATX PSU cable: http://beranger.org/index.php?fullarticle=1469

If you don't feel like it (or you're too scared) any reasonably competent computer shop should be able to test it for you for cheap or free.

[LonWar]

Thanks for all the suggestions... Unfortunately I just got word form the Depot that the Motherboard is toast.....

I'm gonna get 2 usb2 drive enclosures and use the HD's out of it... Oh well....


FOr drive enclosures, I'm looking at a alluminum case... How important are fans? I noticed that most of the enclosures do not have them...

[jgreen]

Glynor, et al, go ahead and shoot this down, but i think the benefits of a fan are marginal.  Marginal--meaning a bad drive will go quicker without a fan, but a good drive's lifespan won't be noticably enhanced by a fan.  I have both, and had drives go the pooch route in both.  Since I hate fan noise more than I hate buying new drives, ALL my new boxes are fanless.   

I think the most important concept is avoiding WD drives.  Except for an Hitachi "Deathstar" that basically fell over gasping on boot, ALL my dead drives have "WD" on their tombstones.  Funny, I have yet to have a Seagate go bad.  And I have Seagates in fanless boxes.

Remember, there are no iPods with fans.  True, the iPod case is far superior to any 3.5" consumer box (the key is thermal contact, carrying the heat away).  But I think you're fairly safe, as long as your data is backed up.

[glynor]

Glynor, et al, go ahead and shoot this down, but i think the benefits of a fan are marginal.  Marginal--meaning a bad drive will go quicker without a fan, but a good drive's lifespan won't be noticably enhanced by a fan.  I have both, and had drives go the pooch route in both.  Since I hate fan noise more than I hate buying new drives, ALL my new boxes are fanless.   

I think the most important concept is avoiding WD drives.  Except for an Hitachi "Deathstar" that basically fell over gasping on boot, ALL my dead drives have "WD" on their tombstones.  Funny, I have yet to have a Seagate go bad.  And I have Seagates in fanless boxes.

Remember, there are no iPods with fans.  True, the iPod case is far superior to any 3.5" consumer box (the key is thermal contact, carrying the heat away).  But I think you're fairly safe, as long as your data is backed up.

I agree with everything you said except knocking WD.  (The Deathstars were terrible BTW -- I had two of those.)  I've had extremely good luck with Western Digital drives.  Almost all of my drives are WDs (I have a handful of Seagates as well).  The only particularly bad brand I've found was Maxtor, but they were recently eaten by Seagate, and now their just rebranded low-end Seagates.

WD actually has among the lowest failure rates in the industry.  However, really they're all about the same.  Once you get past the initial few months of the bathtub curve you should be good to go for a long while.

[LonWar]

hmmm...With the exception of 1 or 2 drives that came with computers, I have only ever had Maxtor... I have never had a problem with them...

Well anyway, I went out and bought 2 Bytecc Aluminum cases... They have 8mm fans... Put them in, hooked them up and they work great... I was rather surprised.
Well, no for the tedious and boring job of going through 2 drives and trashes or moving a bunch of files...