Is my motherboard fried?

[HotFoot]

This morning while I was in the shower the lights went off and on several times. I think it has something to do with the construction on my street. My girlfriend went and turned off my stereo (bless her), and then tried to figure out if the computer was running or not. I have the computer hooked up to a LCD TV, and the TV had turned off and then on again, and it has a few seconds-long warm-up, so my girlfriend couldn't see if the computer was doing something important so she didn't turn it off right away.

Now, when I try booting the computer, there's no video output. The HDD activity LED doesn't flash at all, but the power LED comes on. I'm afraid that I had something more serious than a power outtage: what if it was a power spike? I do have my computer hooked up through an APC power surge protector, but the breaker on that didn't go.

Are there any ideas as to what could be wrong? Is it possible my motherboard fried? I would expect that if it were a HDD failure that I would at least see the POST screen. The only other thing I can think of is that it might be the video card. I don't have spare components lying around to do swap-out testing, so are there any suggestions?

Thanks,

HotFoot

 

[evongugg]

Try clearing the CMOS.

 

[copenhagenlc]

See if the capacitors are blown

 

[HotFoot]

Hey, thanks for getting back so quickly!

I took the HTPC and hooked it up to my 19" LCD monitor using a DVI connection, and it booted just fine. The initial POST had resorted to default settings, but I went into the BIOS and it still had all my settings saved. I got it up and running and now ubuntu is doing a bunch of updates.

Good suggestion on the CMOS. I should have thought of that, and it would definitely be my next step if it hadn't (miraculously) worked.

Also good point on the blown capacitors. If one had gone, I'd at least know which part to replace.

Now further, I wonder why the DVI->HDMI connection to the TV wasn't giving any output. I hope that when I hook the PC back up to the TV it will work, and I'll post about that later today. I'm wondering if it's possible to lose the DVI-HDMI functionality without losing the DVI. I don't think this is plausible. If worse comes to worse and this is the case, I've already ordered new parts for a HTPC a couple days ago so I'm happy as long as this thing still hooks up to my monitor.

So now I'm wondering why it suddenly decided to work. I didn't manually reset the CMOS or change any other settings. I know the TV is still working because I can still play with the PS2. Bizarre.

Again, thanks for the help.

Edit: I'm wondering if my motherboard (P5LD2) automatically reset the CMOS when it failed to POST several times in a row. Maybe if I'd tried booting it one last time before unplugging it from the TV it would have just worked.

 

[HotFoot]

Well, the computer now outputs to the TV, no problems. I get the feeling that it's an automatic CMOS reset after a number of failed boots. Something must have gotten scrambled while the power was flickering on and off. I'm glad I don't have to go about replacing anything.