My Computer Bites The Dust Today!

[pioneervato]

Well my PC (my own)which I use at work daily to keep track of all my grades, lessons, samples of student work (past and present), and just about everything else related to my work took a shit today. At first I thought I just lost power to the outlet serving my surge protector but all the little green lights were still on. I switched the surge protector off then on again and restarted my computer. It came on but would not post. Turned her off again and that was that. Nada! I just happened to have my trusty power supply tester and hooked it up and all indications are that the power supply is good. I think now it is the MB that gave up the ghost. I will know more tomorrow when I hook up another ps and see if that works. If it does nothing then it is more than likely my motherboard. Should be a fairly easy fix even if it is the mb. I just hope its nothing else. It's always something. Ain't life fun?

[x_25]

That sucks. My laptop is like that. There is always something wrong with it. Although with what I put it through I am amazed it still works. In the 2.5 years I have had it it had gone though two disk drives and a harddrive along with various other small problems. Still love it though. :thmbsp:

[Celt]

The Hitachi HD's in my lappie have taken a nose dive twice. The last one lasted exactly 12 months to the day, but came with a 3 year warranty. So last week I pulled it and shipped it to them for a replacement.

[KingBubba]

If your computer has a floppy drive in it, disconnect everything but the MB and the floppy drive, put in a boot or startup disc into the floppy and see if it runs. It does sound like your MB has given up the ghost but statistically hard drives die more often. If it boots to a floppy drive, cdrom, or you can get into the BIOS setup then the MB is usually OK and it's the HD is sick or dead.

[thedruid]

Does it emit any beeps when you power it up? These are error code beeps and can help you narrow it down to memory, etc.

[jhal]

Try reinserting everything, especially memory and the video card if it is not "on board". Good luck.

[gearhead]

If the hard drive is OK, you're one lucky vato.

[pioneervato]

Well today I switched out the power supply with a good working unit to eliminate the power supply as the culprit. The computer started up but the cpu fan and the rest of the case fans were barely spinning. I yanked out the MB with the AMD cpu, attached, brought it home and swapped with a new MB still in the box of the same make and model as the old. Applied some Arctic Silver and reinstalled the cpu. This should (if the problem is the MB) allow me to get things up and running again without XP sensing a major hardware change thus necessitating a re-install of my OEM XP Home Edition. Tomorrow will tell the story.

[pioneervato]

Try reinserting everything, especially memory and the video card if it is not "on board". Good luck.

If the new MB doesn't fix the problem then I will look at other items for possible problems. I hope it's not a memory issue and everything leads me to believe it is the MB. I will cross my fingers until tomorrow when I install the new MB.

[Avocado Dream]

I had that happen once, I cleared the bios by moving the jumper and everything came back as normal.

- Dave

[jhal]

Well today I switched out the power supply with a good working unit to eliminate the power supply as the culprit. The computer started up but the cpu fan and the rest of the case fans were barely spinning. I yanked out the MB with the AMD cpu, attached, brought it home and swapped with a new MB still in the box of the same make and model as the old. Applied some Arctic Silver and reinstalled the cpu. This should (if the problem is the MB) allow me to get things up and running again without XP sensing a major hardware change thus necessitating a re-install of my OEM XP Home Edition. Tomorrow will tell the story.

That's seems odd, as the case fans should be running directly off of the 12v rail (red wire) of the power supply. Are they? I know the CPU fan runs off of the motherboard , but usually the case fans are fed directly from the p/s. Maybe you just have some bad fans that are causing problems?

[AnalogDigit]

Sometimes if you connect and disconnect the hard drive cables on both the motherboard and the hard drive, that would work. Re seat the memory also. Even if I move my computer an inch, things act up.

[x_25]

I had a ram stick dye once. Caused all kinds of weird problems.

[hypertone]

Yeah bad RAM can really mess things up. I've seen bad RAM prevent a machine from powering on.

[x_25]

Actually, I have a server that I need to trouble shoot the ram on. One of the sticks is bad but it takes about a half hour for it to crash because of it. And too top it off it has 1gb of ram... Done with 64mb chips. Yes that it 16 sticks of ram in it. What a nightmare.

[KingBubba]

Slow fans mean nothing. Most newer MBs have fan supplies that also include a third wire designed to vary the speed of the fan as temperature requires. A cold MB will not cause the fans to run fast until things warm up a bit.

[pioneervato]

Well after three days messing with the damn thing swapping out just about everything to isolate the problem, mb, memory, cmos clearing, video card, power supply, switching hard drives, unplugging optical drives, and just about every configuration I could come up with I still have a non-working computer. I did everything but the cpu. Must be the cpu because nothing else worked. All fans running at what now seems to be normal startup speeds but no posting. No beeps, no video, nothing. Funny thing is I can't even get the optical drive trays to open up when I push the button. Not even the little green light comes on as they should. I put a DMM to the molex connectors and there is power to all. Would a bad cpu keep so many things from working? I can't even detect any start up spinning noise from either of the two hard drives. It's gotta be the cpu. Found an exact match on ebay for $12. Used but like new. I'm hoping but I'm willing to gamble $12 plus a little postage to find out. It is an AMD 3000 with a 754 socket. If this doesn't fix the issue then it will be time for a new computer build. Not that that is a bad thing but an expense I don't want to do right now. It is not a hard drive issue as I was able to use an ata/sata/usb adapter to hook it up to my gaming computer and everything is there as it should be. My main drive has all of the Windows drivers and applications, etc. etc. I still could be overlooking something.:scratch2:

[Web Police]

Could be the cpu. I would rest the cmos with a jumper on the mobo if it has one. I have also seen computers act that way if one of the mobo stand offs is grounding out the computer. However this usually only shows up when assembling a new computer and not on an existing one.

Also try different memory if you haven't already.

[x_25]

Have you tried changing cables? My friend had a bad IDE ribbon in his computer that caused all kinds of weird problems. He spent three months (only working on it a little hear and there) swapping parts around and nothing worked. It was the only part he hadn't tried changing so we swapped it and it worked. Another strange thing that happened to my dad was that he had a video card go bad, but the video still worked properly, the computer ws just convinced that it had half the ram that was really in it.

[pioneervato]

Could be the cpu. I would rest the cmos with a jumper on the mobo if it has one. I have also seen computers act that way if one of the mobo stand offs is grounding out the computer. However this usually only shows up when assembling a new computer and not on an existing one.

Also try different memory if you haven't already.


Yep, tried 2 memory modules from a working computer (pc3200 modules) and that did nothing for me. I also checked for ground issues but OK there.

Have you tried changing cables? My friend had a bad IDE ribbon in his computer that caused all kinds of weird problems. He spent three months (only working on it a little hear and there) swapping parts around and nothing worked. It was the only part he hadn't tried changing so we swapped it and it worked. Another strange thing that happened to my dad was that he had a video card go bad, but the video still worked properly, the computer ws just convinced that it had half the ram that was really in it.


Switched cables, nada! Also swapped cables from the optical drives to the hard drives and vice versa and still nada! The only thing I did not try (other than swapping the cpu) is my 3 lb sledge . :D Also tried a video card that I know works and still nothing.

[KingBubba]

Did you swap power supplies? The reason I ask is that the optical drives and hard drives should light up or spin up even if they are not connected to the motherboard by the IDE cable. I just sounds like a power supply issue to me.

[Twenty20Man]

kick it.....

[x_25]

kick it.....

I have actually fixed thinks with that method before...

[pioneervato]

Did you swap power supplies? The reason I ask is that the optical drives and hard drives should light up or spin up even if they are not connected to the motherboard by the IDE cable. I just sounds like a power supply issue to me.

Yes sir, did that too! With a new one and an existing working one but still nothing which has me scratching my head as to why the optical drives don't light up when you press the button to eject the tray. The power supply was my first guess.

[KingBubba]

I concur. Kick it!:D

BTW it is things like this that require that you keep your computer away from open windows.

[pioneervato]

I concur. Kick it!:D

In the past when I was younger I was known to do that. But at 51 I have become more mellow and less prone to acts of violence. :D