I7 system not posting....odd circumstances <sad>

[jerryl]

Hello All,

Did the troubleshooting thread, ....one stick of RAM, CPU, HSF, Video....

won't post at all. Tried three separate sticks of RAM all in slot one.

Fans are on, PSU on, and the hard drive is working like it is trying to load windows...it is spinning up and I hear the heads moving.

There are no beeps, but this asus board has never beeped even when it was running fine. Odd, it has a built in buzzer, that ASUS says is like a system speaker, my case did not come with a speaker, but like I said, it ran great for a week, never beeped on start up (or 'buzzed')


I have an ASUS P6X58D, i7-930, 3x2GB corsair RAM, sapphire 5770, 500 watt rocketfish, seagate drive 1TB, 7200 sata, and a sony CD/DVD.

The PSU went out and took the mobo with it, or so ASUS said. Now with a new PSU, new mobo, and in theory at least one working stick of RAM, and all the troubleshooting steps attempted....would this be a CPU?

and why is the hard drive working so .... hard if the system won't post?

thank you.

 

[jsc]

Work through our standard checklist and troubleshooting thread:
http://www.tomshardware.com/forum/261145-31-read-posting-boot-problems
I mean work through, not just read over it.

Breadboard - that will help isolate any kind of case problem you might have.
http://www.tomshardware.com/forum/262730-31-breadboarding

Breadboard with just motherboard, CPU & HSF, and PSU. You need to be able to hear any BIOS beeps.

You can turn on the PC by momentarily shorting the two pins that the case power switch goes to.

You should hear a series of long, single beeps indicating memory problems.
Silence indicates a problem with (in most likely order) the PSU, motherboard, or
CPU. Remember, at this time, you do not have a graphics card installed so the load on your PSU will be reduced.

If no beeps:
At this point, you can sort of check the PSU. Try to borrow a known good PSU. If you cannot do that, use a DMM to measure the voltages. Measure between the colored wires and either chassis ground or the black wires. Yellow wires should be 12 volts. Red wires: +5 volts, orange wires: +3.3 volts, blue wire : -12 volts, violet wire: 5 volts always on. Tolerances are +/- 5% except for the -12 volts which is +/- 10%.

The gray wire is really important. It should go from 0 to +5 volts when you turn the PSU on with the case switch. CPU needs this signal to boot.

You can turn on the PSU by completely disconnecting the PSU and using a paperclip or jumper wire to short the green wire to one of the neighboring black wires.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5FWXgQSokF4&feature=youtube_gdata

This checks the PSU under no load conditions, so it is not completely reliable. But if
it can not pass this, it is dead. Then repeat the checks with the PSU plugged into the computer to put a load on the PSU.

If the system beeps:
If it looks like the PSU is good, install a memory stick. Boot. Beep pattern should
change to one long and several short beeps indicating a missing graphics card. Silence or long single beeps indicate a problem with the memory.

Insert the video card and connect any necessary PCIe power connectors. Boot. At this point, the system should POST successfully (a single short beep). Notice that you do not need keyboard, mouse, monitor, or drives to successfully POST.

Now start connecting the rest of the devices starting with the monitor, then keyboard and mouse, then the rest of the devices, testing after each step. It's possible that you can pass the POST with a defective video card. The POST routines can only check the video interface. It cannot check the internal parts of the video card.

 

[jerryl]

Best answer selected by jerryl.