Bad boot prob

[desoshade]

Got a prob. Computer won't boot. Not even to bios. Everything seemed fine until I installed a different modem and tried to boot. Notta. I noticed that my hard drive light was on... and staying on. So I thought maybe my hdd crashed. I have 3 hard drives set up as a stripe raid array. 2 of them on raid and one on an ide channel for boot purposes. But anyway, I unplugged all hard drives. the 2 serial and the single ide. Pressed power. Notta. No hard drive light on, but no boot either. Not even to bios. Psu is fine, for all the fans work properly. This is a fairly new system (bout 3 months) The problem is, this is my first system that uses the am2 socket and ddr2 dual channel memory so I have no spare parts laying around to swap and figure out where the problem is. crap. So any ideas? Is it my memory? processor? motherboard? corrupt bios?

If the processor was bad, would I still be able to get into bios?

Crap

Biostar T-Series nForce Socket AM2
OCZ DDRII-800 2 sticks of 512
2.0ghz AMD Dual Core
600w Dual-rail PSU (can't remember brand)
3 hdds (2 serials on a striped raid, 1 ide for boot)
Nvidia GeForce 7600gt oc ko
Creative Live! 24-bit Sound
Generic agre dial up modem
All parts brand new. 3 mos old
Home built system

 

[grimmysnr]

If your screen stays black then most likely the mobo or ram has died on you. It could be psu related but you could check that in any system. I would start there and make sure power is being supplied and its the correct power. Just becuz fans are turning and lights are blinking doesnt mean anything. Get another system to boot with that psu.

Then ram is pretty universal and can be tested in any system that supports ddr2. Take one stick out and test booting with only one stick of ram in the system. Then swap that stick with the other and try again. Last but not least it will be BIOS or mobo related. You wont be able to flash your bios if you cant POST. Try resetting the CMOS pop out the little watch battery, amazingly this works in a lot of the systems i troubleshoot. If after all this and the screen stays black then its time to RMA the board if its still under warranty.

As for the question some boards will allow you to access the BIOS with a broken processor but most of the time they will fatal stop at the while it POST's and tell you "processor broke" or something. Either way you should still get something to display so if you dont then that isnt the problem.

The only exception would be when a mobo doesnt support a certain proc at first and you have to flash the bios for compatibility purposes.