HELP: Odd Motherboard Behavior (ASUS P4S533)

[luca143]

Greetings,

I have an Asus P4S533 motherboard that was working wonderfully for the last year, up until just a few days ago.

As best as I can remember here's what happened and here's where I think the problem lies:

Two weeks ago I had to move my computer from one location to another. Since I have much work saved on my drives, I remooved all harddrives prior to moving them. When I plugged them back in I noticed that they weren't working right. Since I was short on time, I simply RESET BIOS DEFAULTS and everything worked smoothly. That is, for about a week.

After that time, I had to return my computer to its original location. Out came the hard drives and back in they went. I fired up the system and again, it worked well.

Upon the next power on, however, the VGA card failed. (it's a PCI ATI RagePro XPert@Play card). I pulled it out and stuck it back in and got the same problem.

I thought the card was fried, so I tried it in another computer. Worked perfectly. I then took a spare AGP card I had and put it in my computer and it booted up.

At this point (the computer with the AGP card) I noticed that some devices weren't installed properly. The soundcard, IEEE card, additional USB ports and my PCI card did not seem to be initiallxing well.

For instance, my firewire card shows up in DEVICE MANAGER, but it has a (code 10) which means the device did not start properly.. Microsoft says this might be due to it being seated improperly, which I then checked again and it appears to be quite snug.

I've tried various BIOS settings to see if the PCI bus has been "disabled", but no such luck.

I guess my questions would be:

1. Is it possible to "short out" the PCI bus and still have the computer running fine?
2. Is tthre a setting in the BIOS that might prevent these devices from starting (most notably the PCI video card)
3. Has anyone ever seen anything like this before?

Sorry it's so long, but any suggestions would be great.

(Also, please excuse my poor typing. I can't see the monitor from where i stand at this very moment )

----------------------
Thanks,
[dB]Luca

"He who laughs, lasts"

 

[JMark]

The odd assortment of problems makes me wonder about your power supply, or maybe you've got one of those motherboards with the bad electrolytic capacitors? (Check to see if any of the capacitors are bulging and/or leaking, if they all look okay maybe try a different power supply).

I had a recent problem with a machine that was somewhat like yours, and it was bad motherboard capacitors.

 

[Flinx]

I am thinking that the move had something to do with it.
Something got shaken loose/shorted/damaged due to transit, is what I'm thinking. Could be lots of things.

Some things to think about:

1) Reseat all your cards!
2) Recheck all cables
3) Examine wires
4) A short somewhere.
5) Could a screw have gotten away from you and lodged somehwere?
6) Already suggested and to be suggested items

The loving are the daring!

 

[luca143]

Thanks for the replies, folks...

The power idea might be onto to something. Is it possible that when I reset the BIOS the amount of power to the PCI bus was lowered? Is such a thing possible?

I currently have a P4 1.2GHz chip. Apart from that, I couldn't tell you what all my other settnigs are (multilpiers, bus speed, etc).

Is there a way to increse the voltage to the PCI bus and maybe give these cards enough juice to start?


----------------------
Thanks,
[dB]Luca

"He who laughs, lasts"

 

[luca143]

This lazy user would like to thank everyone for their help.

Although I didn't feel up for it, I decided I would unhook everything and pull up my motherboard.

Sure enough, there underneath it all was a tiny screw which someone found its way behind the board.

I removed it and placed everything back; sure enough my system is back up and running without any problems.

Something does need to be said about the durability of hardware. In a world of hairline runs and percise measurements, the fact that a screw can be lodged behind it all, removed and everything working again is quite impressive to say the least.

Well, I'm off to continue my work.

A relived computer user.

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Thanks,
[dB]Luca

"He who laughs, lasts"