System Won’t Boot

Topic

New Reply

OK,

A couple of nights ago I was mucking about with my PC trying to attach a USB bay to it (one I knew didn’t quite work right with the system so I was planning to attach only some aspects of it … yes, I know, stupid huh?) and suddenly my PC stopped booting. It was working fine up to that point but now, whilst there IS power to the motherboard and the system DOES switch on there is nothing … no video, no post (not even speaker only), no error messages.

Since then I’ve tried everything I can think of … I have removed the board & PSU from the case and, on an insulated surface, removed battery, video card, memory, even CPU in various combinations. The system powers up but there are no POST beeps, no video, no apparent life.

Logic tells me there is unlikely to be anything wrong with the memory (Kingston DDR2/667) or video card (X800 PCI-E) and the PSU obviously works so it’s almost certainly the motherboard (ASUS P5ND2-SLi) or CPU (Intel P4 D650 3.4GHz).

My money is on the motherboard and that’s what I’m asking … I have no way of truly confirming what I think because everything else in my house in incompatible with the system and most of my IT colleagues & friends just buy pre-built kit nowadays (I prefer building PC’s).

Obviously I want to get back up and running as soon as I can so I was thinking of buying a new board of eBay that is compatible with the rest of the stuff (and perhaps even offers some upgrade potential) but, given that I can’t be certain, is my assumption that the motherboard is most likely at fault a reasonable one?

Kyu

Reply | Quote

Replies

> is my assumption that the motherboard is most likely at fault a reasonable one

It is certainly a credible cause, but it would be best to find some way of testing it! I guess a motherboard isn’t that expensive in the overall scheme of things, but it would be really frustrating to buy one and find it doesn’t solve the problem.

Do you have a spare PSU you can use to verify that this isn’t the cause?

StuartR

Reply | Quote

StuartR:
It is certainly a credible cause, but it would be best to find some way of testing it! I guess a motherboard isn’t that expensive in the overall scheme of things, but it would be really frustrating to buy one and find it doesn’t solve the problem.

True and, on the assumption that the other components are OK (see below), I am attempting to find a better motherboard (which supports potential more advanced CPU’s etc.) that is compatible with everything I’ve got and have, in fact, identified a FOXCONN motherboard (P9657AA-8EKRS2H) which was the recommended Intel 775 board in the PC Pro magazine (UK) for nearly a year getting supplanted earlier this year so it should be good, by now should be cheap and takes CPU’s up to quad core.

StuartR:
Do you have a spare PSU you can use to verify that this isn’t the cause?

No, but I could buy one for about £20 I suppose … considering my trade & interests I really should have a test bench for this kind of thing. I gave the PSU and motherboard to a friend to test and he has just returned the CPU, memory and video reporting them as AOK.

Jeremy:
When you boot, put your hand on the hdd (or listen intently), can you feel/hear the disk spin up? That will rule out the power supply for you. When you attempted to hook up the new usb bay, was everything unplugged/powered off/grounded?

I’m fairly sure they do but I won’t be able to test that until Monday as my friend has both that and the motherboard and we work from home on different days (Thursday & Friday).

Thanks for the replies guys

Kyu

Reply | Quote

That mobo upgrade might not be a bad idea either way!

Reply | Quote

Indeed … and as it should support my current kit I can slide new (enhanced) components in without my lovely “accountant” (ahem) finding out and giving me an ear bashing

Kyu

Reply | Quote

It was definitely the motherboard at fault … I wasn’t able to easily source the board I wanted so I ended up buying an ASUS P5B motherboard.

Thanks for the help

Kyu

Reply | Quote

When you boot, put your hand on the hdd (or listen intently), can you feel/hear the disk spin up? That will rule out the power supply for you. When you attempted to hook up the new usb bay, was everything unplugged/powered off/grounded?

Reply | Quote