PC all of a sudden won't POST - after 3 years

"Steven Spits" wrote:
Dirk wrote:

My suspicion is that either the motherboard is somehow toast, or else
the power supply has partially given out. What do you guys think is
the likely culprit?

Recently I had to fix a PC with the same symptoms as yours: only the fans
would spin, no other activity.

A multimeter showed that the current on all my rails was too low (8V on
the
12V line for example).

You mean the *voltage* was too low.

Jon

"Jon Danniken" wrote:

A multimeter showed that the current on all my rails was too low (8V on
the 12V line for example).

You mean the *voltage* was too low.

Yes, I mean voltage, not current.

Sorry, English is not my native language.

Steven

- - -

wrote:

Here is my problem - I built a PC over 3 years ago and for no obvious
reason it has just stopped working. Here is the setup and my symptoms:

check your c-mos battery on the mainboard.

It's almost undoubtedly either the PSU or the motherboard that has failed,
as you noted. Replacing the PSU, which is the most likely culprit, is
fairly easy and worth trying. If that doesn't fix it, then it's the
motherboard that's bad and it sounds like you'll throw in the towel on this
system at that point.

--
DaveW

----------------
wrote in message
ups.com...
Hello all,

Here is my problem - I built a PC over 3 years ago and for no obvious
reason it has just stopped working. Here is the setup and my symptoms:

Setup:
ASUS P4P800 Deluxe Motherboard
Pentium 4 2.8Ghz 800MHz FSB CPU
2x Seagate 120GB SATA Hard Drives (240GB Total) in RAID 0 Stripe Array
1024MB (2x512) Micron PC3200 DDR Ram 400
ATI All In Wonder 9800 Pro 128MB Video Card
Antec TrueBlue 480Watt Power Supply
Creative SB Audigy2 Platinum EX sound
HP DVD300i DVD+RW CDRW Drive/Burner
LG DVD-ROM
1.44" Floppy Drive
Microsoft Windows XP Pro

Symptoms:

System worked flawlessly for 3 years. I turned it on yesterday morning
and forgot to turn it off before going to work, so it sat all day
running (which shouldn't be a problem as the case is well cooled and
has been on for days on end). System is on a high quality surge
protector.

When I got home, the monitor was blank so I had to do a hard shutdown
(hold power for 4 seconds).

When I try to boot the machine now, the fans whirl up, the
motherboard's power LED comes on, but
- there is no POST,
- no video to the monitor
- no HDD activity (the drives don't spin up and the cased LED for HDD
activity is blank)
- The green LED on the DVD Burner stays solid green
- no beeps whatsoever
- the optical mouse has power

That's it - it just hangs like that.

My suspicion is that either the motherboard is somehow toast, or else
the power supply has partially given out. What do you guys think is
the likely culprit?

I don't want to spend a lot of money on a 3.5 year old machine doing
trial and error with parts, and I don't have an extra MB or power
supply around. I am thinking about testing the power supply with a
multimeter but other than that I'm not sure what to do. If people are
90% sure it's the MB or Power Supply I might take the chance and buy
replacements but if it could be one of many things I might not bother
and sell off the components on Ebay.

Thanks!

Nobody has mentioned the video card cooking itself.
I'll bet my balls that if you pop a different video card in it will boot up
for you.

wrote in message
ups.com...
Hello all,

Here is my problem - I built a PC over 3 years ago and for no obvious
reason it has just stopped working. Here is the setup and my symptoms:

Setup:
ASUS P4P800 Deluxe Motherboard
Pentium 4 2.8Ghz 800MHz FSB CPU
2x Seagate 120GB SATA Hard Drives (240GB Total) in RAID 0 Stripe Array
1024MB (2x512) Micron PC3200 DDR Ram 400
ATI All In Wonder 9800 Pro 128MB Video Card
Antec TrueBlue 480Watt Power Supply
Creative SB Audigy2 Platinum EX sound
HP DVD300i DVD+RW CDRW Drive/Burner
LG DVD-ROM
1.44" Floppy Drive
Microsoft Windows XP Pro

Symptoms:

System worked flawlessly for 3 years. I turned it on yesterday morning
and forgot to turn it off before going to work, so it sat all day
running (which shouldn't be a problem as the case is well cooled and
has been on for days on end). System is on a high quality surge
protector.

When I got home, the monitor was blank so I had to do a hard shutdown
(hold power for 4 seconds).

When I try to boot the machine now, the fans whirl up, the
motherboard's power LED comes on, but
- there is no POST,
- no video to the monitor
- no HDD activity (the drives don't spin up and the cased LED for HDD
activity is blank)
- The green LED on the DVD Burner stays solid green
- no beeps whatsoever
- the optical mouse has power

That's it - it just hangs like that.

My suspicion is that either the motherboard is somehow toast, or else
the power supply has partially given out. What do you guys think is
the likely culprit?

I don't want to spend a lot of money on a 3.5 year old machine doing
trial and error with parts, and I don't have an extra MB or power
supply around. I am thinking about testing the power supply with a
multimeter but other than that I'm not sure what to do. If people are
90% sure it's the MB or Power Supply I might take the chance and buy
replacements but if it could be one of many things I might not bother
and sell off the components on Ebay.

Thanks!


Suggestions:
1) Check CMOS battery is ok - 3V ish.
2) Check for bulging / leaking electrolytic capacitors on mobo.

On Thu, 28 Sep 2006 03:53:12 GMT, "Venom"
wrote:

Nobody has mentioned the video card cooking itself.
I'll bet my balls that if you pop a different video card in it will boot up
for you.



While it's possible, so are many things. If the video card
fan hasn't failed and the system wasn't excessively
overheating, you might be careful about bets as you only get
to lose twice.

Might also want to remove, clean and reseat all cards, memory, and CPU.
Also perhaps clean back dust off of Mobo.

wrote:
Hello all,

Here is my problem - I built a PC over 3 years ago and for no obvious
reason it has just stopped working. Here is the setup and my symptoms:

Setup:
ASUS P4P800 Deluxe Motherboard
Pentium 4 2.8Ghz 800MHz FSB CPU
2x Seagate 120GB SATA Hard Drives (240GB Total) in RAID 0 Stripe Array
1024MB (2x512) Micron PC3200 DDR Ram 400
ATI All In Wonder 9800 Pro 128MB Video Card
Antec TrueBlue 480Watt Power Supply
Creative SB Audigy2 Platinum EX sound
HP DVD300i DVD+RW CDRW Drive/Burner
LG DVD-ROM
1.44" Floppy Drive
Microsoft Windows XP Pro

Symptoms:

System worked flawlessly for 3 years. I turned it on yesterday morning
and forgot to turn it off before going to work, so it sat all day
running (which shouldn't be a problem as the case is well cooled and
has been on for days on end). System is on a high quality surge
protector.

When I got home, the monitor was blank so I had to do a hard shutdown
(hold power for 4 seconds).

When I try to boot the machine now, the fans whirl up, the
motherboard's power LED comes on, but
- there is no POST,
- no video to the monitor
- no HDD activity (the drives don't spin up and the cased LED for HDD
activity is blank)
- The green LED on the DVD Burner stays solid green
- no beeps whatsoever
- the optical mouse has power

If the hard drives don't spin up, almost certain that the power supply
is not working properly. If you have a multimeter, measure the voltage
between the black ground wires and the red (+5V) and yellow (+12V) lines
on one of the drive power connectors, you'll likely find one or both are
way off..

--
Robert Hancock Saskatoon, SK, Canada
To email, remove "nospam" from
Home Page: http://www.roberthancock.com/