Tek-Tips is the largest IT community on the Internet today!

Members share and learn making Tek-Tips Forums the best source of peer-reviewed technical information on the Internet!

  • Congratulations bkrike on being selected by the Tek-Tips community for having the most helpful posts in the forums last week. Way to Go!

Help Im blind (motherboard issue)

Status
Not open for further replies.

Fray

MIS
Jan 15, 2003
1
US
Ok so heres the scenario:

I end up with a PC in my lap the has had its ram stolen and wont start (dont ask its a long story). Anyways when you turn it on the power supply powers up and the LED on the MB lights up just pretty as can be.. for about half a second then the whole things shuts itself off. Ok so its a cold solder or short problem in the motherboard, right?

Replace motherboard and get new RAM after testing a new power supply and removing all unnecessary components to make certain its the culprit.

Turn on PC.. motherboard lights up CPU fan starts going and the drives spin up. Woohoo its fixed, right? Wrong.

Thats all it does.. no video no POST beeps (not even the single beep that says its started up) and it just sits there like the worlds most expensive paperweight.

Ok so perhaps its the video card? Replace the AGP video card with another one I know works. Same effect no screen no beeps no nothing. Replace with a PCI card (maybe the AGP slot just isnt active in the bios) still sits like a dead log.

Ok lets just go from scratch. Whole new motherboard and processor and yet another video card. No dice same effect.

I could use some help before I put my fingers to my lips and go wubba wubba and tear hair out till they ship me off to the place where the men wear nice clean white coats and they give me a pretty sweater that laces up the back with extra long sleeves.

Morgan
 
Fray

Not to help you but perhaps to put off the donning of the white coat for a few minutes.

I had a very similar problem:

My RAM was incorrectly installed and when the computer was started it beeped. So i took it apart, and removed the fried stick of RAM, now when i turned it on again with 1 good (i hope) stick of RAM it powers up for a second and the cd lights flash and then it all goes off. The maniboard LED is on (ASUS A7V) but nothing happens, the HDD will also not start windows anymore and it will not repair, ( i have tried in the console replacing the start-up files)

Any ideas anyone.

2x 128Mb SDRAM

__________________________________
Create like a God, Command like a King, Work like a slave..
 
Make sure your master/slave settings are set up right. When you have two devices set up as master on the same IDE channel then your system won't boot. Having two slaves on the same IDE also doesn't work.

Greetings,

Kocky.
 
thanks Kockey

Good suggestion however i have only 1 hdd and is set-up as master.
I think my mainboard might be fried.

__________________________________
Create like a God, Command like a King, Work like a slave..
 
Do you also have a cd-rom drive installed. If so then you still have to check your master/slave settings.
 
i do but it is on a different channel. maybe i'll try swapping the HDD to a different one.. Will try

thanks again __________________________________
Create like a God, Command like a King, Work like a slave..
 
I didn't catch whether or not you did it, but I would breadboard the whole thing.

Pull the MB and power supply out of the case. Make sure nothing shorts, and hook up the Power supply, MB, CPU (with fan/heatsink), RAM, and video. Now short out the power on pins on the motherboard (where your power switch should hook up). Does it POST and get anything on the monitor?

If not, then doublecheck all settings. After that, start replacing parts until it works.

For more ideas, you might check faq602-2731 Mudskipper
___________________________________________________________________________________

Groucho said it best- "A four year-old child could understand this! Quick! Run out and find me a four year-old child: I can't make heads nor tails out of this!"
 
I just had a dead Dell that had both a bad CPU and bad memory. Relpace either and the system would not boot, replace both and it was OK. Reinstall either and again no boot.
 
Status
Not open for further replies.

Part and Inventory Search

Sponsor

Back
Top