Mah PC is bleeding!

Post by **HereComesPete** » October 28th, 2009, 10:50

Problem - I press the power button, lights turn on, fans spin up, no boot, nothing on screen, nothing from the hdd activity light.

Things I've tried -

Stripping everything out bar the very basics to get a post screen. Nothing.

Different ram flavours in different slots. Nothing.

Different Graphics cards. Nothing

Multimeter on psu. (I'll probably buy a new one anyway, looking at the inside shows it off as a bit of a mess after a few years of use) Rails are okay.

Cmos battery out, jumper on and powered off overnight to see if that will do anything (I'm aware it doesn't do much except act as a clock now, but I tried it anyway). Nothing.

This has been happening a while, with me trying various tictacs to get a boot and it was working. I gave up with the tricks and left the thing on hibernate or just plain on, windows update snuck up on me in the night and turned the fucking thing off.

I'm thinking it's time for me to buy a new mobo. Anything else y'all can think of before I spend monies?

Post by **Dr. kitteny berk** » October 28th, 2009, 10:53

Got an old cpu? S775 prescott is my weapon of choice, but anything different might work

Also, some mobos have a failsafe bios flash function, that could be worth a shot.

Post by **Dr. kitteny berk** » October 28th, 2009, 10:55

oh, and tried booting with no hardware at all plugged in?

Just a bare board, that might make it beep and work out it's meant to work (then add cpu, test again, then ram)

Post by **Dog Pants** » October 28th, 2009, 10:56

If you're not even getting a POST screen I'd agree with it being the mobo. You should see your graphics card BIOS first out of anything, and if that's not happening you're probably looking at mobo of gfx card. Since you've swapped your gfx card out, pretty much leaves the motherboard. PSUs might do it, but again you've checked that out too. Horrible things are mobos, bane of my life.

Post by **HereComesPete** » October 28th, 2009, 11:05

No beeps, mobo has no onboard post speaker, case only has failure alarm. Possibly I picked the board for that reason, regret it a bit now.

Gigabyte backup bios is accessed through post screen and I can't see a jumper to horse into backup factory one. Manual isn't very chingrish, but at the same time quite slim and too much words on flow diagrams of northbridge and not much words on onboard bits.

Lost old 775 prescott, thing it went skipaways.

Post by **Dr. kitteny berk** » October 28th, 2009, 11:09

http://www.hardwarecanucks.com/forum/gu ... guide.html

might be useful too, likely you've covered it all, but y'know.

Post by **HereComesPete** » October 28th, 2009, 11:11

Thinking about it the mobo might well possess a series of leds that light up to show activity. And I'm also thinking I possibly didn't see the couple that hang round near the pci-e doing anything except brooding in the dark.

I was aiming to get a pre-xmas house move but if I go post xmas I may well have the funds for the upgrades I want. This may be the thing that sees me buy a new mobo psu and gpu. The cpu is doing fine as is the ram so I'll stick with them for a while longer.

Post by **HereComesPete** » October 30th, 2009, 16:37

Right, new mobo is arrived and fitted. I now has post screen.

Different problems emerge however, the psu likely needs replacing as it takes a few attempts to actually start properly, it tries for a few seconds, then dies, then again lasting a few seconds longer only to die. Four/five times maybe, unless I just power off and flick the off switch on the psu itself to drain it and then get a clean restart.

Windows is busted, system file is shagged. I expected this given the new chipset, but the first time I turned on I got a log on screen but no usb stuff worked, then I tried a restart and it was bust. Windoze repair seems to hang on loading the c drive install, it can find it but then it goes and does nothing.

To confound the problem I gave up and decided to just format and re-install, except it goes and does nothing whilst looking for previous windows installs.

Reckon it's the old OS drive shagged as well as the psu, other ideas would be helpful.

Post by **Dr. kitteny berk** » October 30th, 2009, 16:46

Feed the HDD to dban? that'll make sure it's not going retarded while looking at a corrupted to fuckery old install.

Also do memtest, just because i've seen weird boot issues when hardware isn't quite plugged in right.

Post by **HereComesPete** » October 30th, 2009, 17:08

I may just re-download 7, install that on the new disk and work from that to see if the other disk has died.

I think I'll order a new psu as well.

buzzmong · Post by **buzzmong** » October 30th, 2009, 17:13

I think you need to nuke it from orbit, after all, it's the only way to be sure.

Post by **HereComesPete** » October 31st, 2009, 12:23

New psu fitted!

Same problem (few restarts before getting going) occurs with new psu, one thing I didn't think to check was the state of the power/reset buttans on the case, possibly I've just blown a ton on something I didn't need just yet, all it might be is a shagged power button that fried the last mobo. Still, a 650 corsair is better than a 580 hiper.

It could be the cpu, but bios shows that as holding a nice 29c without load. I took it off the old mobo and it seemed just fine.

It could be the gpu dying slowly and messing everything up. But I haven't got any money left now to replace either without hitting the credit card.

Fucking fucks sake fuck!

Post by **Dr. kitteny berk** » October 31st, 2009, 12:25

Memory voltage?

Post by **HereComesPete** » October 31st, 2009, 12:59

After searching about with my ram product number and finding results anywhere between 1.8 and 2.2 I decided to ignore the bright red numbers in the bios and set it to 2.1. It turned off, then spazzed a bit and now seems fine.

Possibly this was part of the restart problem so thanks for that berk.

Now I've just got to sort out a bootable usb for 7, try and see what's happened to the xp disk and try to unclench my rectum from the constant wincing that new stuff is going to blow up.

I shall never trust this build again, even with all parts replaced.

Post by **Dr. kitteny berk** » October 31st, 2009, 13:01

y'know when I said memtest up there? I meant it

Post by **HereComesPete** » October 31st, 2009, 13:03

I ran it, it ran okay with the mobo settings as they were.

I did however turn the 'turbo' mode off in the bios as that causes nothing but instability, so that's probably why the voltages have dropped since memtest.

Post by **Dr. kitteny berk** » October 31st, 2009, 13:05

ahh, could be.

I like 2.1v for rams anyway, seems a good number.

Post by **HereComesPete** » October 31st, 2009, 14:16

Shitting crikey I'm not having a good time with technology today.

I made my bootable usb disk, copied the iso files to it, deleted that file in the boot bit that points at the wrong thing and then attempted to get it to work. Boot thinger on the mobo has a billion options to choose from in terms of what type of usb it is, none of them work.

Try again.

Post by **HereComesPete** » October 31st, 2009, 15:21

Right, the usb was showing as a hdd, so now I'm installing 7.

That problem with the restarty is back. Bios had a message saying it had recovered from an overclocking error, whether this was automajic because of the ram voltage I'm not sure. I've lowered it to 2 flat to see if that helps.

There's a noise just as everything starts to settle down sounds like a loud clunk sound, then it turns off and tries to restart again. I'm horribly aware of how this voltage fluctuation shafted the last mobo but I can't seem to shake it.

Anyone got ideas?

editz - other than memory obviously.

Also - anyone ever had problems with case switches?

Possibly I need to review every voltage going and fettle them, this I shall do soonest.

Think I'll run memtest again.

Maybe I need to hit the credit card with a new gpu too.

And then I might as well buy a new cpu and ram too.

Post by **HereComesPete** » November 12th, 2009, 22:07

Well, another power failure in this redneck village has seen me take everything bar the cpu out the mobo to get the thing to try and turn on and stay turned on from a cold start. In fact it was taken out the case and placed on desktop with the power leads in and a switch made by me to get it to start (I figured maybe it was the front io being silly).

It won't. It turns on for a few seconds, then turns off, then tries again, repeat ad infinitum until I scream at it, punch something and turn the power off.

I really struggle to see how the cpu can behave this badly but be absolutely rock solid when its actually on. Or maybe it has and its killed another mobo with me having replaced the wrong thing. Looks like I'm waiting for pay day to buy another one, roll on two weeks from now.