Followup on "replaced cooling computer power"

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hgfalling

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Aug 27, 2013
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Hi. This is a followup to this thread:

http://www.tomshardware.com/forum/id-1782390/replaced-cooling-computer-power.html

but I don't think it's essential to read that.

Basically, I replaced the liquid cooling in my PC with a fan-cooled heat sink when it was turning off due to runaway heat. When I put it back together, I couldn't get any power at all; no fans, no post, etc. At some point, I switched the CMOS jumper from "keep data" to "reset data". Then when I powered on I got fans, but no post.

At the suggestion in the other thread, I bought a new power supply (Rosewill Hive 550). It arrived today. I removed the motherboard from the computer, unplugged mostly everything, leaving just the CPU/heatsink/fan and memory 6x2GB plugged in. Then I plugged the two connectors from the new power supply: the 24pin connector and the 8 pin 12V connector into their respective spots on the motherboard. I get an amber LED which lights up even when nothing is powered on. When I powered on the first time, I got a brief green light, and some of the fans started turning for just a moment, and then everything shut down (except the amber light stays lit as long as the PS is on). After that, nothing. I even reattached the old power supply to the motherboard to see if that would work, but nothing there.

So does this mean that the motherboard is somehow fried?
If yes, what's a good guide for motherboard shopping (my current setup is through the above link).
If no, am I possibly missing something? I'm not very experienced with system building or anything, so it could actually be something seemingly obvious and/or stupid.

Thanks!
 
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hgfalling

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Aug 27, 2013
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OK, I did the following. Took out all but one memory stick, including the CPU. Cleared the CMOS with the button. When I turned on the power supply, nothing happened. Plugged in a fan to SYSFAN1, repeated. Now green LED, fan turned on (also power supply fan). Powered everything, replaced the CPU/heatsink/cpufan. Repeated. Got green LED and CPU fan turned on, but did not POST. Added graphics card, plugged in a monitor to see if anything was displaying, but no signal to monitor. In the meantime I switched the CMOS jumper back to "retain data," which led to no bootup. In fact, I haven't been able to get the green light in any way except resetting the CMOS by button and then starting the power supply, which causes a boot. (I have the power button panel in a separate place; it would be kind of a pain to bring it to where I am working on this stuff. However, the motherboard has a power button on it, which hasn't worked in any way since this post went up, although I believe it did work before all this.

So now I am wondering if maybe it's just the CPU that's fried. But I am a little bit scared of just replacing it, since a) I'm not totally confident I might not make a mistake in putting it in b) it's pretty expensive to buy a comparable CPU without knowing for sure what's wrong. (it's a quad-core i7). Is there any way to be sure of what's going on before I start ordering expensive parts hoping that they will fix it?

 
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hgfalling

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Aug 27, 2013
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Put in the new motherboard, and everything seems hunkydory, except for a Windows-related problem with the USB and drivers for a wireless mouse. But the BIOS detects it fine, so this seems like something else. Thanks again for the help!
 
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hgfalling

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Aug 27, 2013
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No, I wasn't able to find the exact same motherboard for a reasonable price. I replaced it with an Asus X58 Sabretooth.
 
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hgfalling

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Aug 27, 2013
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After getting everything going, the wireless mouse wasn't working. It's the usual thing, a USB dongle that the mouse communicates with. I tried it in different ports, etc. Each time I put it in a different port, Windows 7 would bring up the "installing device driver software..." and then that would fail, and the receiver would show up as "Unknown device" or sometimes "USB Receiver" but inspecting in Device Manager would say that "no driver is installed." I also had a wired USB mouse, which installed normally and just worked. I also swapped out this wireless mouse for a different one I've been using on a laptop. Both mice worked fine on the laptop; neither worked on the PC with the new mobo. BIOS, however, detected two USB mice correctly.

Following some online forum threads, I installed the Renesas (sp) USB controller driver from the Asus website for the new board, and reinstalled the Logitech driver for the mouse. I uninstalled lots of "missing" USB devices, ones that weren't working, other controllers and hubs, and so on, and tried to let everything reinstall itself. This mostly didn't work. I looked up what driver the mouse was using on the laptop; tried that, but it too failed.

At some point, I actually got the wireless mouse working at startup, after uninstalling some USB things. Then Windows detected the mouse and tried to install a driver, at which point it stopped working. So that was weird. Eventually I retraced the steps and then found another forum post describing how to tell Windows not to install drivers for USB stuff automatically. This worked for a couple days, but eventually for whatever reason the wireless mouse wasn't working.

I also had a couple of problems with the NVIDIA display driver today as well; I updated it to a fairly newer version (from 9.13.x to 9.20.x), but I don't know whether that will help or not.

It does seem like reinstalling the OS might be a pretty good idea given all this. I guess I have a new project for this weekend. :)
 
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hgfalling

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Aug 27, 2013
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Update, with fewer adjectives:

With display driver problems getting more and more common, I reinstalled Windows. I had a little trouble with setting up a USB device to boot the Windows install (the Windows tool wouldn't recognize my USB stick), but I ran the install from disk. It certainly seemed like a fresh Windows install, but it wasn't. Display driver still crashing frequently, although USB issues with the mouse were resolved.

Found a way around the USB stick problem (manually setting up boot with DISKPART). Fresh install of Windows (formatting HD first). Display drivers still crashing. Argh, frustration! Download all kinds of drivers: chipset, fresh NVIDIA, disable some audio drivers that people say sometimes conflict, etc. Nothing working.

OK, open up the case, let's make sure the video card is well-seated. Pull it out. Yuck, what is this crud on the connectors? Clean it off with a q-tip and a touch of isopropyl alcohol. Put back in, make sure it's well-seated. Hold breath.

No crashes! Hooray! Computer lives!

Thanks again.

(btw I'm pretty sure that AscendTech sent me a used motherboard without mentioning it on their website. It was pretty cheap, so I am not going to do anything about it now, since it seems to be working okay. But beware.)
 
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