BIOS or MOBO dead?

[Coxy01]

Hi,

Gigabyte ga-8st667
Pentium4 1.5 Ghz
award bios

I was using some recording software on my PC, stressing it out using lots of memory and the software I was using stopped responding, I couldn't shut it down by hitting the "x" so I killed it in task manager.

I then shut down my PC (start, turn off)and it hung on the "windows is shutting down" screen for a couple of minutes, so eventually I held in the power button for about 5 seconds to power it off. Now when I turn it back on again nothing happens. The fans start and the CD ROM powers up but no bios beep, nothing on the monitor either.

I took the case off and on one of the capaciters (the little round tower like things that stick up on the motherboard, I think thats what they are) had some brown residue on the top of it, Im assuming this is a "leaking" capaciter meaning the motherboard is now dead, im guessing this is what they do if they overheat or something?

The other thing I would like to try is to flash the bios incase it is corrupt or something and not even getting as far as trying to start up the machine. My motherboard manual does not mention how to flash it using jumper settings (This had worked on previous machines) so I assume it cant be done on this motherboard, their is flashing software it mentions, if you can get in to the bios, but I cant get that far so how do I do it, is it worth it anyway or do I just accept that the mobo is dead?

I have powered it back on again and now I get a short pause where it used to beep then a serious of beeps in quick sucsession that just continue.

so basically im guessing MOBO or BIOS is stuffed?

any suggestions to assist in trouble shooting this would be great

Thanks

 

[ArizonaGeek]

It sounds like your motherboard is dead to the world. But a few things you can try is, see if you can clear the BIOS by jumper on the motherboard. Try replacing the memory if you have extra laying around to see if it is a memory problem. It sounds like you are getting a power so you could almost rule out a power supply issue but just in case unplug any extra hard drives, all CD rom drives and any extra devices you have plugged in to see if your power supply has issues.

Flashing your BIOS wont do you any good if you cant get to the BIOS in the first place unless you had problems with it before you started your stress test.

Finally, I'd say you have a motherboard problem and for a P4 1.5ghz you should be able to find a new motherboard fairly cheap on pricewatch.com or Ebay.

Cheers
Rob

 

[wahnula]

Those beeps are trying to tell you something:

http://www.neoseeker.com/Hardware/faqs/kb/12,12.html

pointing towards RAM or video. That capacitor may or may not have a problem, check here:

http://www.badcaps.net

Windows balked at shutdown due to those hardware issues I will bet. Whatever you do please examine your case cooling strategy.

Tony

 

[spudnuts]

One note on the capacitor, I had the same problem and all I did was take a small clean paint brush and cleaned the capacitor off and havn't had a problem since. I'm still using the same motherboard but had added some serious cooling.

Dell motherboards are famous for that capacitor leakage problem. Usually the system is suffering from a thermal problem (over heating).

Information Assurance,CCNP,CST