Motherboard doesn't make it to POST

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May 23, 2014
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Sup Tom's Hardware, you've helped me a lot through the years but I never took it as far as registering here.
But yesterday, my old Asterope motherboard started acting funny. I was watching TV on an installed capture card and then it suddenly froze, so I uninstalled it. Then after a while the PC locked up big time again, and had to take out the RAM sticks to make sure that wasn't it. Then it stopped freezing but it also stopped getting Internet connection from the onboard Ethernet card. As I was messing with the network settings for about four hours, it decided that was it, and froze again. Had to do a hard reboot, but it never came back from it. When I tried turning it on the Power LED and the HDD LED come on, then the HDD led stops and doesn't show POST, BIOS settings, none of that.
My specs: Radeon 4550 HD, Pentium D 945, 1.5 GB RAM, Windows 7 32-bit.
 
Solution
T
It's hard to tell what the problem might be with the info you provided. I'm guessing it is a desktop box. Two immediate things come to mind: 1) the PSU went out or 2) the mobo is toast.

1. If the fan is spinning on the PSU, it's probably OK although 8 years is stretching it. If the fan isn't spinning replace it.

2. The BIOS has its own code execution unit and shouldn't need the processor to run so I'm guessing the mobo power supply section has gone bad. That looks like a cheap motherboard. It probably has electrolytic capacitors in the power control section and electrolytic capacitors are cheap but they don't last very long. Search for "images of bad capacitors" and see if yoiu have any on the mobo.

BTW, running Windows 7 with 1.5Gb...
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thx1138v2

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Jun 18, 2011
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It's hard to tell what the problem might be with the info you provided. I'm guessing it is a desktop box. Two immediate things come to mind: 1) the PSU went out or 2) the mobo is toast.

1. If the fan is spinning on the PSU, it's probably OK although 8 years is stretching it. If the fan isn't spinning replace it.

2. The BIOS has its own code execution unit and shouldn't need the processor to run so I'm guessing the mobo power supply section has gone bad. That looks like a cheap motherboard. It probably has electrolytic capacitors in the power control section and electrolytic capacitors are cheap but they don't last very long. Search for "images of bad capacitors" and see if yoiu have any on the mobo.

BTW, running Windows 7 with 1.5Gb RAM will really give the system a workout since it will constantly be swapping RAM to the hard drive. Windows 7 should run 4Gb and it's so cheap these days it doesn't make sense not to.

I suggest a new computer since this one seems to be pretty old but if you want or need to bring this one back to life, check those things mentioned above.
 
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T

top hardware

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May 23, 2014
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Thanks THX, fans on both the PSU and the case are still spinning. This MoBo does have lots of capacitors but none of them look blown, and I've had experience with those on an old Xbox that did have a blown capacitor. It is indeed a cheap motherboard as it comes from an HP prebuilt desktop, but it served me well, and I have an "if it ain't broken, don't fix it" attitude with these things.
Guess I'm gonna have to cope with the loss and buy a new one, well, a whole new MoBo/RAM/CPU/maybe even PSU/combo.
 
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