FA+
Shop
I think my motherboard died...
13 years ago
General
So, here's what happened and the steps I took to test. If you can think of anything else I should do or if anything else might be borked, let me know:
1.) I was watching Soul Eater (again) on Hulu. Paused to get up and do something, when I came back the computer had completely froze, unable to ctrl+alt+del or anything. Forced shutdown, waited several seconds, turned back on. The fans and lights went on, but nothing appeared on my screen and I heard no beep.
2.) Opened up, checked all connections to make sure they were secured. Saw my sound card (which I got a couple months ago) was halfway out, assumed that was the issue. Reseated it, found a screw to secure it this time, then tried to turn on the computer. I got to it to POST, beep and all, and after BIOS I got "A disc read error occured".
3.) This is the second time I got the error. Before I just replaced the SATA cable and plugged it into another slot and it worked fine, so I did the same thing this time. On startup, I got the BIOS screen, checked the startup sequence, saw the drive was showing, continued, and I got the Windows load screen. After 3 minutes of sitting at the load screen, the computer had froze. Further attempts to restart resulted in the original problem: fans and lights went on, no beep.
4.) Opened back up, removed the sound card, gfx card, memory, and harddrive, and tried to start up. Still no beeps whatsoever. Plugged them all back in, still nothing. I'm sure I even hear my harddrive spinning with startup, so that should still be fine.
So... I think my motherboard is dead. From what I've read, the inability to POST is either the motherboard, PSU, or CPU. The PSU seems fine (since the fans start and the harddrive spins) and I haven't done anything to the CPU and those apparently rarely go bad. I could be wrong though, they're all almost 6 years old now, so assistance would be appreciated.
Either way... fuck... Yet another thing to go wrong with very little going right.
I currently cannot build Nimin or play most games with my desktop out of commission. I forgot to backup the fla to Dropbox as well, so all the work with the layout is currently inaccessible. I'm assuming the harddrive should be alright though, so I will be able to access it later, possibly even putting it in my brother's computer if I really need to. The code itself, on the other hand, I did backup and can continue to still write code.
I don't know how much a new motherboard is going to cost yet, I haven't looked, and if it's the CPU instead that'll cost even more. I don't even know which I need to order yet. I still don't have that job I was hoping for yet, haven't heard back though I am told they might be interested, so this is just going to be a pain in the ass in all regards...
1.) I was watching Soul Eater (again) on Hulu. Paused to get up and do something, when I came back the computer had completely froze, unable to ctrl+alt+del or anything. Forced shutdown, waited several seconds, turned back on. The fans and lights went on, but nothing appeared on my screen and I heard no beep.
2.) Opened up, checked all connections to make sure they were secured. Saw my sound card (which I got a couple months ago) was halfway out, assumed that was the issue. Reseated it, found a screw to secure it this time, then tried to turn on the computer. I got to it to POST, beep and all, and after BIOS I got "A disc read error occured".
3.) This is the second time I got the error. Before I just replaced the SATA cable and plugged it into another slot and it worked fine, so I did the same thing this time. On startup, I got the BIOS screen, checked the startup sequence, saw the drive was showing, continued, and I got the Windows load screen. After 3 minutes of sitting at the load screen, the computer had froze. Further attempts to restart resulted in the original problem: fans and lights went on, no beep.
4.) Opened back up, removed the sound card, gfx card, memory, and harddrive, and tried to start up. Still no beeps whatsoever. Plugged them all back in, still nothing. I'm sure I even hear my harddrive spinning with startup, so that should still be fine.
So... I think my motherboard is dead. From what I've read, the inability to POST is either the motherboard, PSU, or CPU. The PSU seems fine (since the fans start and the harddrive spins) and I haven't done anything to the CPU and those apparently rarely go bad. I could be wrong though, they're all almost 6 years old now, so assistance would be appreciated.
Either way... fuck... Yet another thing to go wrong with very little going right.
I currently cannot build Nimin or play most games with my desktop out of commission. I forgot to backup the fla to Dropbox as well, so all the work with the layout is currently inaccessible. I'm assuming the harddrive should be alright though, so I will be able to access it later, possibly even putting it in my brother's computer if I really need to. The code itself, on the other hand, I did backup and can continue to still write code.
I don't know how much a new motherboard is going to cost yet, I haven't looked, and if it's the CPU instead that'll cost even more. I don't even know which I need to order yet. I still don't have that job I was hoping for yet, haven't heard back though I am told they might be interested, so this is just going to be a pain in the ass in all regards...
The motherboard doesn't have any lights, only beeps. Though I hope the onboard sound card isn't required to produce those beeps, because that died a couple months ago. Yet, plugged into either the onboard or new sound card produced no beeps.
And I can't even find a motherboard with my cpu socket on Newegg... So if I do have to get a new one, either I'd have to find some other site with older boards, or have to get a new CPU as well x.x Really hoping it's the PSU at this point...
And the harddrive itself is still good, so all my data is still saved.
Still I highly recommend trying each stick of ram individually to be safe (and in different sockets) as it might save you some cash!
Sadly when you get an issue like this there's just no knowing which of those components it is without swapping them around into a known working configuration, and I always dread it turning out to be the PSU... cause if it is it might fry any other replacement parts you might toss in before you figure it out =/
Yes, gaffer tape. That desktop had a rough life, even caught fire once when the speaker line shorted. No joke, caught fire. Still worked for years!
I don't actually know you, and you needn't place huge value on my advice, but I STRONGLY recommend investigating your power supply as the culprit. Just because the fans and HDDs turn doesn't mean it's good; it just means that one of the power rails in it works. The more important one (that powers your CPU and RAM) may have failed. I literally JUST resolved this issue myself with a new power supply this evening.
This sort of issue is EXTREMELY annoying to troubleshoot. Consider re-seating all your hardware, checking your RAM stick-by-stick, and swapping out components with any spares you may have lying about. Also, it is sometimes possible to start the computer once by shutting it off completely (IE, turn it all the way off via the switch on the back of the PSU or unplugging it from the wall) and then turning it back on.
Additionally, read up on your motherboard's CMOS and POST instructions; resetting your BIOS by removing the big flat 3.0v battery for a few minutes could help.
Sorry to hear this issue has affected you, but, don't be scared to try stuff you find on the Internet; this kind of problem really is strange to troubleshoot and the oddest stuff (including the RAM stuff people have mentioned in this topic) can make a difference.
P.S. - Thanks for being awesome.
cause unless you smelled something burning, your mobo is fine
And I reseated all of my hardware and even tried starting it up with all of it (even the RAM) removed, but didn't get a beep. And I always turn it off completely like that when I work inside, because I need to carry it out to the dining room table to really get into it XD
I just tried the battery thing and still no success, unfortunately : /
If you aren't getting beeps, it is very possible that your mobo may be the problem.
Regardless, keep fiddling for a while (and definitely try the extra PSU when you get the chance), as, like I said, this sort of issue is silly to troubleshoot.
Best of luck to you!
Now before going off and hunting for a new mobo or processor, a good idea is to see if it is the PSU, see if you can find/borrow one that is at very least as powerful as the one you were using, you can always go up, but going down just causes more problems as under powering things won't help solve things. if you can rule out PSU, well, at this point it's mobo or CPU.
good thing is that this almost definitely hasn't affected your hard drive. if you plug your hard drive into another computer, you'll be able to access all the data there no problem, easy enough, and you should be able to boot straight from it from another mobo as well.
It also makes testing the psu on working hardware heart attack inducing lol
On the subject of power supplies, you should know that Dell did, and maybe still does, use oddball power specs and standard ATX power connectors, on some of their motherboards. I did not know this, and literally smoked a Dell motherboard using a standard ATX PSU years ago. I'd imagine it would be the same if you used one of those oddball Dell power supplies on a regular ATX motherboard.
Oh, and I think some motherboards now use flash memory for the BIOS settings, so popping the button battery will only reset the system clock. If you want to be sure you cleared and reset the BIOS, find the "BIOS reset" or "CMOS reset" jumper on the motherboard. Set that, wait a minute, then set it back. That'll clear it for sure.
If you've got the money, and don't mind abusing the return policies at Best Buy or another retailer of PC components, you can pick up a new PSU there, use it to test, then pack it up and return it. I've done that a few times when I was short extra parts for testing.
I'd recommend getting SysRescueCD. It's a free Linux based self-booting CD or flash drive rescue toolkit. It saved my bacon more than once when I locked myself out of Windows and needed to reset my password. I don't know how willing you are to learn some Linux commands, but even if you aren't, it includes two really good memory and hard drive tester programs that boot separately, and require no Linux knowledge to operate.
If you don't want to muck with SysRescueCD, than at least download MemTest86+. It's small enough to fit on a floppy disk, but there's instructions to make a bootable CD or flash drive on its site as well. Once your system is up enough to boot, let MemTest run overnight and if there's memory problems, it'll find them.
Here's hoping your computer problems are both easy and cheap to fix. Good luck!
I'm not sure I can give you much more help than that there. Try the tricks out they might work, they might not. Typically everyone thinks that when their computer won't start it's always something big (relatively speaking to computers that is) usually in my experiences computer issues are tiny things like dust, lint, or slight disconnections in wires. You may also have a pinched wire somewhere along one of the chords.
I hope your computer is back up and running soon! I know I speak for just about everyone on here when I say; I couldn't live without my computer!