Need Help Troubleshooting

[Guest]

Hey guys....I need a little help figuring out why my computer has suddenly stopped powering up. This story starts out back in the day [months ago]. I used to live in a small tiny room with horrible airflow and it was always hot in there so my computer would always be running hot. My computer is always on 24-7 and I noticed the temperatures starting to lag [I checked the BIOS and the Asus Probe program that comes with the Asus boards]. 'Lag' as in some voltages were off about a 1V which had never happened before. So I eventually moved to a bigger room and I cleaned out the entire computer and power supply with compressed air before settling into the new room. When everything was put together and started up again the voltages were right back where they were supposed to be...maybe .3V off max. Anyway 2 days ago I kept getting blue screen after blue screen after blue screen and when the ASUS P4P800 Deluxe boots up and has a problem it'll talk to you [don't know if you're familiar with that]. Anyway it booted up and said 'overclock failed'....well I don't nor have I ever overclocked this system. So I opened it up and tried to see if anything was wrong. I noticed a loose cable had somehow become lodged in one of my power supply fans....I took it out...let it all cool down and restarted w/o any problem. Hours later that same day the blue screens started again....and after the third blue screen I hit reset and the system shut down and has not boot up since. I figured my power supply died....but today I went out and bought a new Vantec 520W and sure enough it didn't boot up. Now with either power supply [old or new] the light on the motherboard turns on to let me know the switch on the powersupply is on....but other than that I have no activity what-so-ever. The only other thought I can come up with is that the wire from the power button to the motherboard is shorted or open somewhere. Any ideas? Sorry for the long post but background information was needed . Thanks!

 

[Blasphemy]

First, reset CMOS. Refer to your motherboard manual on how to do that. Verify that your RAM is seated correctly in the slots. Even if your RAM is seated correctly, try moving a stick around to a different RAM slot. Also, what do you mean by won't boot up? Like it will POST and that's it, or it won't POST? Are you still getting any vocal messages? Make sure your video card is seated correctly, and try a different video card if you can. All these things will help narrow it down. Also, unplug any unnessessary devices when you troubleshoot (soundcard, extra hard drive, extra cd-rom, etc).

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AMD Athlon 64 3500+ (stock)//1GB Corsair 3200XL//ATI Radeon 9700Pro (360/335)//WD Raptor 74GB/Antec Neopower 480W//Lian Li PC-61 Custom

 

[Mr5oh]

Follow Blasphemy's advice, and start pulling components out, trying to turn your PC on after you pull one thing out. (Pull your modem out, try and turn on, pull out 1 stick or RAM, turn on, etc.) If you have two RAM chips, try just one chip, and just the other.

If you really think it could be the power switch, unplug the powerswitch from the motherboard, and touch those two pins with a screw driver, this should turn your PC on, assuming it was a bad switch. (Probably not likely) (You just need to short the two pins for a second to turn the PC on, this is what the power switch does.)

My Desktop: <A HREF="http://Mr5oh.tripod.com/pc.html" target="_new">http://Mr5oh.tripod.com/pc.html</A>

 

[Guest]

When I say "won't boot up" I mean I get no power at all when I press the tower's power switch. No fans....no lights...no activity at all. But anyway I'll have to wait to go home and try what you guys said and get back to you tomorrow on how it went. Thanks again!

 

[Guest]

Well here's what happened. Swapped memory banks...no good. Took components out one at a time until i was down to 1 hard drive memory and CPU [no gfx card] and it still wouldn't boot. I took a screwdriver and shorted the pins on the motherboard....nothing. I then took everything apart and broke it all down into pieces and looked for broken or burned up components. Nothing at all! Put everything back together....and the computer works perfectly fine...no problems. I did however remove the battery on the motherboard to clear the CMOS when I had the thing in pieces so maybe that was really the problem after all....but I will never know. Thanks for the help guys!